Category: film restoration

Online Film Festivals: first impressions

Already more than half year has passed since the pandemic generated a tidal wave of changes in our daily lives and habits. Of course the world of cinema and the film industry at large have been affected by Covid-19 too, and one of the consequences is that the international film festival circuit has been completely disrupted.

From last March, most of the big film events worldwide have been cancelled, postponed or have moved online, and it was only in recent months that we saw, with Venice as a frontrunner, the return of the film festival as we used to know it, with all the necessary social distancing and limitations.

Many festivals opted for an online and often limited edition. It has been interesting for me to see how these net-events have been organised and scheduled (ticket price, catalogs, regional restrictions, etc.) and, I have to be honest, it was fun to experience them in all their diversity, and I’m not talking about the movies. Before proceding with some reflections on a couple of online festivals I’ve “attended”, let me make some disclaimers:

– I live in central Japan, in a small city far from Tokyo, and neither very near to Osaka or Kyoto, that is, for me going to a festival here in Japan means to plan in advance and commit time and money.

– I work in the field, so to speak, I write and occasionaly collaborate with film festivals, but I have also a daily job that allows me to survive.

– I really enjoy going to film festivals, watching the movies is only a part of the experience, it’s everything else that makes it special for me, film culture extends way beyond the mere act of wtching a movie, online or not. That is one of the reasons why going to the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival every two years has been a real joy.

That was to clarify my position. Now, in the past months I had the chance to experience, in one form or another, watching many movies or only one, the following online film festivals:

Far East Film Festival, Udine, Italy

Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, Italy

EXiS 2020, Seoul, South Korea

Open City Documentary Festival, London

Yūbari International Fantastic Film Festival, Yūbari, Japan.

2020 Skip City International D-Cinema Festival, Saitama, Japan.

Le Giornate del cinema muto, Pordenone, Italy (starting soon)

and counting…

The biggest wall that everybody interested in watching film festivals online (or should I call them film events online?) bump into are the regional restriction. Understandably, not all movies can be licensed to stream in all locations, and navigating through these limitations can be frustrating at times. The Udine Far East and Il Cinema Ritrovato had regional restrictions but their sites (actually the MyMovie platform) was very easy to navigate and it was very clear which movies were available in which country.

Those two festivals and Le Giornate in Pordenone use the same screening schedule’s method: each movie is scheduled at a certain day on a certain time, like in a normal film festival, but it’s available to watch online for 24 hours, also to make it easy for people watching from different time zones. On the other hand, the Yūbari Film Festival in Hokkaido basically replicated online the format of the physical festival: there were three “screens” (channels on Hulu Japan, the festival was free if you had the service) each showing different movies, a bit like TV, with the only difference being that the movies were rotating. While this option is without doubt the closer to the real festival, I found the 24 hours window to be the perfect one for me, you still have the “pressure” of missing a movie, but at the same time it’s easy to organise your day.

A different approach is being used by the Skip Digital Festival (at the time I’m writing still happening), if you buy a pass, about 1500 yen, you can can watch, only if you’re in Japan, all the 24 movies presented, at any time during the event.

While, as I wrote above, the online festival is not the same as the “real thing” ーno big screens no communal viewing, no socializingーit is undisputable that for cinema people who, like me, live far from big cities, in other countries, or don’t have much free time, it’s a golden chance for new discoveries. And by the way, you’re finally watching movies like the film festival programmers and directors…on your PC….

Is the online film festival here to stay? I don’t honestly know, but I would say that in the next few years we will see more hybrid experiments between online and physical film festivals happening.

Feel free to chime in and share your experience, you can do it here.

Kobe Discovery Film Festival 神戸発掘映画祭 2017

A new beginning for the Kobe Documentary Film Festival. From this year the annual event held at the Kobe Planet Film Archive since 2009 will change its name and concept into Kobe Discovery Film Festival (神戸発掘映画祭). The renaming reflects a shift of the festival’s focus from documentary to film and moving image preservation and restoration, and the (re)discovery of less known movies from the past, something on the lines of what, with great success, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna has been able to become in recent years. I really like the idea, because I think that in an era like the one we live in, when digital images are produced, consumed and binged frenetically every day, going back to the dawn of cinema and exploring the fringes of film culture is a refreshing and re-balancing practice, especially in Japan.

The festival, although it is more a cinematic event organized in four days than an actual film festival, is also an opportunity to reflect on the importance of cinema archives in the contemporary mediascape, it may sounds tautological, but Kobe Planet Film Archive before being a theater is first of all, well, an important film archive.

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The first edition of the Discovery Film Festival will take place from November 23 to 26 and is divided in six sections.
Amateur cinema discovered: home movie day, with screening of 13 Japanese short movies made in prewar Japan during the 1930s (there’s even a colour film, 兵隊と花), is an interesting occasion to get a glimpse of the everyday life in Japan in a period when the country was rapidly changing (mainly for the worst).
100 years of animation in Japan is dedicated to celebrate the early animations made in the country, divided in three sub-sections the program will present early examples of amateur experimental animation and silhouette animation, and some early works from the 1920s, including  An Old Fool (のろまな爺, 1924) by Ōfuji Noburō, rediscovered by the Planet Film Archive itself few years back. In the program also a couple of works recently discovered (sorry I don’t have the English titles): HOT CHINA　聖林（ハリウッド）見物, マンガ　空中凸凹拳闘 (1941),  カテイ石鹸 (an advertisement made in 1921) and 小人の電話 (1953).
The latest digitized films is a program that will showcase an interesting selection of movies recently digitized from 35mm prints, otherwise impossible to screen, by the Kobe Design University, while Selected by Planet will present a bunch of movies from its archives, including The Peerless Patriot (国士無双, 1932) directed by Itami Mansaku (father of Itami Jūzō), and the 1950’s 海魔陸をいく (no English title) by Igayama Masamitsu, a film between documentary and narrative cinema similar, as far as I know, to the works of Jean Painlevé.
A special screening of the color (Konikolor) version of A Jazz Girl is Born (ジャズ娘誕生, 1957) by Sunohara Masahisa, shown last year at Il Cinema Ritrovato, and a series of 8mm experiments by musician and filmmaker Mori Ari will conclude the festival. You can find the entire program (in Japanese) here.

The idea and the concept behind the Kobe Discovery Film Festival are really promising, also considering the important position of Planet Archive in preservation and restoration in Japan, and I whish the organizers the best of luck.