Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival (JAEFF) 2019: Nation is taking place at the Barbican and Close-Up Cinema in London. A full list of events and ticket links can be found on their website. Places for their free Filmmakers’ Workshop event are very limited, so don’t tarry!
What’s New?
Thanks to their drinks partners Kirin and Tengu Sake, and hi-fi suppliers AudioGold, JAEFF are delighted to invite you to their opening and closing night drinks receptions at the Barbican Beech Street bar. There’ll be beer and sake (of course) accompanied by a deep dive into the unmatched record collection of Howard Williams AKA NTS Radio’s Japan Blues.
Friday’s reception will take place from 21:00 and Sunday’s closing drinks will be served from 20:30. Simply show your ticket for any JAEFF 2019 event to gain entry!
What’s On ?
Upcoming Events
Anime’s Human Machines
Barbican
12 – 30 September
Since you’ll already be hanging around the Barbican for JAEFF this September, you should also check out their anime season. Amongst screenings of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Metropolis and Satoshi Kon’s Paprika is the only film to have given JAEFF producer George a panic attack: Shinya Tsukamoto’sTetsuo: The Iron Man (with panel discussion).
In 1963 Osamu Tezuka’s TV series Astro Boy brought a new kind of robot to Japan. The robot child with a loving heart began a line of compelling, conflicted cyborgs whose existence challenges humanity.
Japanese animation has embraced robotics, cybernetics and artificial intelligence as major themes. More interestingly, it uses these themes to explore complex moral and social questions: humanity’s responsibility for its actions, response to the other, greed, short-termism, failure to care for the ecosystem that sustains us.
This season examines the challenge of the man-machine interface through eight films on various aspects of humanity’s response to technological change. One interesting factor to emerge from these films is how our own view of technology has changed since the earliest was released. Another is how humanity still refuses responsibility for the impact of our actions. These films give no answers, but suggest responses.
Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival 2019 Part 2
11 – 14 September
Following Part 1 earlier this Summer, Aperture returns for its Autumn screenings, continuing their commitment to presenting some of the boldest, most daring and striking films from the Asian and Pacific regions to wide and diverse audiences across the UK.
Aperture seeks to bridge the gap within the UK festival landscape as the only UK film festival to cover the whole of the Asian region and also to explore Oceania, as well as reflecting on the inherent links and blurred boundaries between Asia and the Pacific, particularly within transnational contexts.
Aperture is a collaborative initiative, seeking to forge strong partnerships with other like-minded festivals and organisations. We’re delighted to be partnering with Essay Film Festival, London Korean Film Festival, MUBI and NANG for this second edition.
The festival is presented in London in two parts – part 1 taking place 4-13 June, and part 2 from 11-14 September, while the festival will tour various locations around the UK from July to October.
Presented by Day for Night in partnership with the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), University of Westminster.
Keep checking their website for a programme announcement!
For International JAEFFers
CAMERA JAPAN 2019
Rotterdam, 25 – 29 September 2019
Amsterdam, 3 – 6 October 2019
CAMERA JAPAN is a Japanese cultural festival organised in Rotterdam every year since 2006. The main focus is on film, but we also explore the visual arts, music, dance, fashion, architecture, food, and much more. Every autumn, we take a selection of films from the programme to Amsterdam for a weekend of screening the best, the weirdest, and the most unexpected cinema from Japan.
Check the website for full programme details.
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2019
10 – 17 October 2019
Located in a verdant, rolling valley far north of Tokyo, Yamagata City is the site for Asia’s first international documentary film festival. The first Film Festival (in 1989) was an event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Yamagata City, the sponsor of the festival at the time, and has been held biennially ever since in Yamagata’s best season, October.
Until recently, the week-long YIDFF was one of the few film festivals in Asia devoted exclusively to the documentary form. Its scope, however, reaches beyond simply screening recent, ground-breaking work in the International Competition. New Asian Currents, the competition program introducing emerging filmmakers from across Asia, has over the years become one of the Festival’s vibrant centers of attention as a meeting place of raw youthful energy. By featuring special events and programs shedding light on the history and diversity of filmmaking, the YIDFF is working hard to create a new forum for the production of alternative, independent, non-fiction film and the discussion of documentary as a form of expression.
Whilst the full lineup is yet to be announced, the international competition features new work from Frederick Wiseman and Wang Bing’s eight hour epic collection of testimonies from the CCP’s anti-rightist purge in the 1950s: Dead Souls.