The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library Friday Theater（May 10 Fri）
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
Encounters 14:00-、19:00（screens twice）
Encounters
YIDFF 2007 International CompetitionThe Mayor’s Prize
Dir: Pierre-Marie Goulet / PORTUGAL, FRANCE / 2006 / Video / 105 min
●notes
Mesmerized by the songs of Peroguarda villagers in southern Portugal’s Alentejo region, young Portuguese modern poet Antonio Reis, Corsican researcher of Portuguese folk music Michel Giacometti, and film director Paulo Rocha visited the village one after another in the late 1950s. This work refreshes the soul and flows with songs and poetry seeped in sadness, as well as the atmosphere of the quiet sea and village, fields adorned with vibrant red flowers, and roads traveled by Reis and the others, while interspersing images from Paulo Rocha’s films.
Encounters
●Director’s Statement
After the completion of my previous film, Polifonias—dedicated to Michel Giacometti, the Corsican savior of the memory of popular Portuguese culture—was born the desire to traverse certain paths that had been pointed out to me: that of the home of António Reis (then still a poet) in Alentejo, in the village of Peroguarda, the very same place in which Michel Giacometti wished to be buried, and others I wished to visit for my own reasons, such as, for example, to approach Paulo Rocha’s film Mudar de Vida, which fascinated me particularly by the interaction between the narrated story and the end of the fishing communities of Furadouro.
Little by little it became clear what, beneath the surface, constituted in my mind one of the faces of Encounters: the echo of the past, of a time gone by, of a culture which had died out, but an echo one hears in the present and which resounds in its appeals. It thus became a question not of deploring what has disappeared, not of making a nostalgic return to the past or of bringing fragments of the past into the present, but of letting go of memory to make way for the living. Because of that, the film has a strange relationship with time. Intermingling and telescoping various “historical” times, the chronology loses its importance—the dates no longer really have such a thing. The past no longer occupies the place one traditionally attributes to it.
I see the film in the text of Sérgio Godinho, which recurs rhythmically over the course of Encounters: They say that in death one comes from afar to encounter something. We find reincarnation in the recognition of a voice, and some far-off voice brings us that familiar certainty that we have never been alone. For we find familiarity on a park bench where we have never been seated. Because a recollection that fades lives on in our memory. What mystery of memory is this? That of life, which rubs things out, then rewrites what it continues to feel.
Pierre-Marie Goulet
ncounters
Images of a Lost City 16:10-（single screening）
Images of a Lost City
YIDFF 2011 International Competition
Dir: Jon Jost / USA, PORTUGAL / 2011 / Blu-ray (SD) / 92 min
●notes
A street corner in Lisbon. Women sit on a bench in a stone-paved square at the top of a hill. Youths mess around with motorbikes. People walk up and down the hill. Languid, listless light and wind. A tram. Children having fun playing soccer. The sound of a guitar, overlapping with the long shadows of trees. These may be ordinary everyday scenes, but they are also beautiful and somehow melancholy. This is a visual poem dedicated to a “lost city,” made over a period of 15 years by Jon Jost.
Images of a Lost City
●Director’s Statement
Images of a Lost City was shot in 1996–1997, right after the DV (digital video) format was first marketed for consumers. On its arrival I quickly realized its large potential, dropped all thought of working further in film, and began to shoot solely in DV. Courtesy of its very low cost it was possible to shoot large amounts of material, as well as to do very long shots. This in turn, along with other aspects of DV, pointed to another aesthetic than that which dictated celluloid filmmaking, and I promptly went into exploring this in many ways, as the diverse qualities of London Brief (1997), Nas correntes de luz da ria formosa (1999), 6 Easy Pieces (2000), and OUI NON (2002) all demonstrate.
Images of a Lost City was culled from some 11 hours of material that I shot in that period and saved (I shot much more but junked the uninteresting material the same day as shooting it). Having no narrative, it was very difficult to edit—hence the long period between the shooting and the completion of it. Such work requires a completely different sense of rhythm, time, attentiveness to ambient sound, and figuring out how to orchestrate it through time without the easy hooks of “a story” or some “topic.”
Images of a Lost City is about a place and its spirits and ghosts. I hope it has properly caught some of the particular and specific qualities which are Lisbon.
Jon Jost
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library Friday Theater（April 12 Fri）
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
Dir: Vitalij Manskij / RUSSIA / 1999 / 35mm / 91 min
●notes
Grappling with many thousands of meters of private film, director Vitalij Manskij has emerged with this chronicle of a generation of Russian youth. The period from 1961 to 1986 began with Yurii Gagarin’s adventure in space and ended directly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Childhood, parents’ divorce, fights with friends and the excitement of a first kiss… these familiar scenes of youth are spelled out by narration from the filmmaker himself. A chance to enter the everyday life of an extremely average middle-class family in the communist Soviet Union.
Private Chronicles. Monologue
●Director’s Statement
It is rather difficult to explain this work briefly, because the preparation period alone took more than three years. The estimate of even the preparation period exceeded the estimated expenditure of the film by a dozen times. More than 5,000 hours of footage were presented for editing. Large archives of private amateur films (8 and 16 mm) from 1945 to 1991 were gathered for the film from all over the former USSR.
Private Chronicles. Monologue creates a life history of the most paradoxical generation of Soviet people. It is a kind of film epoch which recreates the life of one young man who absorbed the experience of many thousands of people his age.
The hero of the film was born on April 11 1961, the day before the most optimistic date in Soviet history: Gagarin’s first flight to space. Together with the main hero we run year by year through not only the life of one man but the life of the whole state right up to 1986, the year when the empire began to collapse.
This film will be the most realistic portrait of the epoch—it includes not one professionally-shot sequence. From beginning to end it is all made by Soviet people who called themselves “amateur filmmakers” and who were shooting unpretentious family chronicles not for spectators but for themselves. In this sense, Private Chronicles. Monologue is the first “people’s film” in Russian cinema, the first film that was created by people themselves.
Vitalij Manskij
Hunting Down an Angel or Four Passions of the Soothsayer Poet 16:00（single screening）
Hunting Down an Angel or Four Passions of the Soothsayer Poet
YIDFF 2003 International Competition
Andrey Osipov / RUSSIA / 2002 / 35mm / 56 min
●notes
A unique work that uses experimental techniques to depict the life of Russian poet Andrey Belyi. By re-compiling and editing footage from Russian documentary and feature films of the 1910s and 1920s, the era in which he lived and the stories of four women surrounding him are brought to life. A search for the real Belyi, who was described variously as a “star-blessed genius,” the “incarnation of a phantom,” the “second Gogol” and a “hysterical screamer.”
●Director’s Statement
When presented the opportunity to make a film about the extremely eccentric character of Andrey Belyi, who by certain mainstream standards one might even hesitate to call a human, I became intrigued by the prospect of giving his story form. I considered the option of simply following the standard blueprint for a biographical film. Although this traditional approach would surely still have made for a sufficiently engaging film, on a personal level this design offered little appeal. It is for this reason that scriptwriter Odelsha Agishev and I decided to knead this life chronicle from a slightly more unconventional perspective. By making use of silent film we hoped to weave his story through a search for a new form, a new language of film, that arose in the silent film genre during the era in which Andrey Belyi lived (1910s and 1920s).
Many things seem to happen intuitively. People live and wake according to an internal rhythm that conforms to some form of natural law. The symbolists did not hide the belief that within what can be seen there is much that cannot, and from limited space, infinite interpretations can be drawn. From this perspective the boundaries between life and art ceased to exist, and life became like a game for them.
What is important is expressing that person’s story, and the emotions associated with that story. Film is a medium not of information, but of feeling.
Andrey Osipov
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
YIDFF 2017 Encore Screenings Part 12: Film Censorship in China and Indonesia
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
A Filmless Festival 14:00-、19:00-（screens twice）
A Filmless Festival
YIDFF 2017 New Asian Currents Special Invitation Film
In 2014, the authorities shut down a film festival in Beijing immediately before it was to open. The film captures this tense time, including interference by plainclothes police officers posing as villagers, a search of the film festival office, and staff taken in for interrogation. Footage shot by many participating hands documents the private screenings and discussions held by directors and guests at the houses of Songzhuang artists, and the festival’s “closing ceremony,” in which people expressed their solidarity by posting pictures on social media of themselves with their eyes closed. The film becomes witness to what really happened.
A Filmless Festival
●Director’s Statement
In August 2014, authorities brought the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival to a halt. During this time, many of the guests as well as audience members and volunteer staff committed the period that followed the shut-down to video. The footage was collected and preserved as a record of the incident, and edited together into this film. The Beijing Independent Film Festival was a rare and crucial independent film festival. In recent years, non-governmental film festivals in China have been halted in succession, and since the shut down of this one, virtually none are left. Things have gone back to as they were more than ten years ago. The situation is regressing, no matter how one looks at it. Because of this, it was necessary to leave a record for posterity. The video and audio materials used in this work were all supplied by audience members, local artists, directors and guests participating in the film festival, staff, volunteers, reporters, and the media. This film was created through a group collaborative effort.
Wang Wo
Cuts 16:00-（single screening）
Cuts
YIDFF 2017 New Asian Currents Special Invitation Film
Dir: Chairun Nissa / INDONESIA / 2016 / 64 min
●notes
The film follows a director (Edwin) and his producer as they submit their film Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly to the Censorship Board as required by Indonesian law. They do so in part to document the censorship process. The film inquires into the current state of film production and screening in Indonesia as it records internal processes that include film and document submission, test screening with board members, meetings, amendments necessary for resubmission, testimony, and the personal opinions of the board members and government officials. All the while, the film also becomes a space for dialogue with independent filmmakers who continue to question this system of censorship.
Cuts
●Director’s Statement
Cuts is a film that deals with the fundamental elements of human rights. It’s ironic that when directors are mature enough to take a stand and talk about the problems faced by Indonesians they meet rejection from the Indonesian Film Censorship Board (LSF). The newest program being promoted by the LSF is one of “self-censorship,” which further solidifies the losses suffered not only by filmmakers, but also by the film community and the general public. We must wonder if the LSF will ever evolve as an agency, to keep pace with developments of the nation and of humanity itself.
Chairun Nissa
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
Screenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
14:00-、19:00-（screens twice）
Droga!
Droga!
YIDFF 2017 New Asian Currents
Dir: Miko Revereza / USA, THE PHILIPPINES / 2014 / Video (Original: 8mm) / 8 min
●notes
In Los Angeles, the raison d’etre of a Filipino local captured through a mix of American culture and Tagalog language. Degraded video, a youth engulfed in noise, the ringing of Tagalog’s footfalls, a grandmother’s figure on video tape, the repeating rhythm of chaos—with these images, we peer into the director’s mind, etched into Super 8 film.
●Director’s Statement
This was in many ways my first work confronting post-colonial Filipino American identity. This film was influenced by the Manila-based community of experimental filmmakers whom I befriended at the time, and who have since become close friends and collaborators.
It was shot on Super 8 film while I was an Artist-in-Residence at the Echo Park Film Center.
Disintegration 93–96
Disintegration 93–96
YIDFF 2017 New Asian Currents
Dir: Miko Revereza / USA, THE PHILIPPINES / 2017 / Video / 6 min
●notes
Home videos taken in the 1990s—when the director and his family emigrated from the Philippines to Los Angeles—ooze with unease and longing for home. And now. This video letter from the director’s father to his family in the Philippines exposes an existence in America that has “dis-integrated.” The images are overlaid with the voice of the director who was raised here, speaking American English like a ghost, coming together to make a film that forges forward at full speed at the viewer.
Disintegration 93–96
●Director’s Statement
To be an undocumented immigrant in America is a performance.
I am now exhausted of this performance.
Disintegration 93–96
Imagining Indians
Imagining Indians
YIDFF ’93 Special Invitation Film
Dir: Victor Masayesva, Jr. / USA / 1992 / 16mm / 79 min
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
creenings at the Yamagata Documentary Film Library present documentaries and movies rarely shown on television or in theaters, including works from the Film Library vaults.
Screenplay: The Times—Three Decades with the Children of Golzow and the DEFA Documentary Film Studio
14:30-（single screening）
Screenplay: The Times—Three Decades with the Children of Golzow and the DEFA Documentary Film Studio
YIDFF ’95 International Competition Runner-Up Prize, Citizens’ Prize
Dir: Barbara & Winfried Junge / GERMANY / 1993 / 35mm / 284 min
●Notes
This film is an account of a 30-year documentary chronicle of the children in school class in Golzow, from their childhood to their midlife after German unification. The development of this generation at different time periods is portrayed, but attention is also focused on the parents of the Golzow children, their own children, the town, local agriculture, and the history of the countryside in the Oder marshlands. More than 30 years-long, the chronicle is the oldest long-term observation in film history, as well as being a part of the history of documentary filmmaking by the DEFA.
[Venue]The YAMAGATA Documentary Film Library(Yamagata Big Wing 3F) [Admission]Free admission for members (Member’s fee: free) [Presented by]YIDFF (NPO) [Contact]e-mail：info@yidff.jp(YIDFF Yamagata office)
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