I WOKE up one morning to this message: “We are honored to invite you to the 22nd Udine Far East Film Festival….” It was a bit of wild good news, but there was also a problem: How do I travel to Italy? As far as I know, Udine was in that area in Northern Italy that was among the first European places to post a huge number of Covid-19 cases. I knew the festival had been postponed to another month. I looked again at the e-mail and there it was the solution: the Udine Far East Film Festival Online Edition. I was being invited to an online version of the feast.
For all that, I need to thank the filmmaker, Elvert Bañares, who, when asked, tipped Max Tessier, film critic and the most wonderful Frenchman this side of the Riviera, who in turn asked me to write a biography, together with the filmography, of Eddie Garcia. The late actor was to be honored in the Udine Far East Film Festival, reputedly the biggest festival dedicated to Asian popular cinema.
The fate of this Udine filmfest is not unique.
All over the world, the main minds behind the various film festivals have decided that, given the pandemic, it is not wise to compel people to travel and gather in places. Airline travels have been technically canceled except for the so-called sweeper flights aimed at rescuing the stranded nationals of their respective countries.
Responding to the pandemic, which is both cultural and medical, an initiative was launched, called “We Are One: A Global Film Festival.” The project involved the first-ever programming lineup curated with 21 of the most prolific and most popular film festivals in the world. It was a 10-day digital film event made exclusively via YouTube.
In the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) section, four short films and two feature films have been selected.
Senior programmer Yoshi Yatabe, representing the TIFF, puts it succinctly when he commented on the four short films and two feature films curated for the event: “…We have tried to select films that will allow people to feel a sense of freedom through the joy of watching cinema, despite the restricted nature of our lives now.”
Featured in that unique event was director Masaaki Yuasa, who won the Crystal Award (Grand Prix) at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival with his feature film Lu Over the Wall. Yuasa is represented by a short film that was featured in the Animation Focus of TIFF in 2018. It has no dialogues.
From director Koji Fukada, who won an award at the TIFF in 2011 with Hospitalité as well as a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival with Harmonium in 2016, were his short films.
Akiko Ooku, a TIFF Audience Award-winning director, offers Tremble All You Want. The film’s synopsis says: A young woman finally finds real romance in a life full of secrets and unrequited love.
Another film is called Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops. It is a film directed by Daigo Matsui, and narrates the tale of a group of young actors struggling with all the problems of a theater production.
A Fukada work, The Yalta Conference Online is having its exclusive world premier. The title refers to the conference held by the leaders of the US, the UK and the USSR toward the end of World War II. A 30-minute parody of the meeting, which aimed at creating a scenario for the victors when the war finally ends, is made by the Seinendan theater company.
Continuing initiatives online, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan has announced its hosting of a virtual version of the Japan Pavilion, which is operated by UNIJAPAN. This endeavor will form part of this year’s market component (Marché du Film Online) of the Cannes Film Festival. With this film festival also canceled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Marché du Film is being held completely online for the very first time.
The virtual Japan Pavilion is expected to serve as a hub to connect Japanese and international industry members while providing information about new Japanese films, film festivals to be held in Japan, and Japanese film commissions. It will also host special talk sessions with two filmmakers whose films were selected for the Cannes Film Festival Official Selection 2020: Naomi Kawase, director and writer of True Mothers (produced by Kino Films), and Koji Fukada, director of The Real Thing (produced by Nagoya Broadcasting Network). The sessions will be streamed live.
The Philippines is also participating in the virtual Marché du Film of the Cannes Film Festival.
According to the Film Development Council of the Philippines, this year four films from the Philippines will be part of the biggest business component of Cannes Film Festival. These films are documentaries made by Joseph Mangat, Miko Revereza, Cha Escala and John Torres.
Holy Craft by Mangat (producer is Alemberg Ang) is described as looking into the intersections of religion, labor and gender at a factory manufacturing Catholic figurines and statues.
Nowhere Near by Revereza (producer is Shireen Seno) tells a story of migration and exile. The director is quoted as saying the film is a “poetic memoir exploring stateless identity through the lens of an exile returning to an estranged homeland.”
Escala directs Remnants of a Revolution, which is produced by Leizyl Badion. The documentary is
about Pepe Luneta, a founding member of the Communist Party of the Philippines who fled the country in the 1990s to seek asylum in Germany.
Pepe, who is very sick, longs to see the son he has not seen for more than 20 years.
Torres produces and directs The Remotes, a documentary formed using footage of film productions in the Philippines and neighboring countries “filmed from the periphery of other filmmakers’ film sets.” The documentary is in black and white. The documentaries will be presented through a pitch, with the filmmakers using a 10-minute sequence of the rough cut from their works. Each film screened will have the opportunity to win various prizes including the €10,000 Docs-in-Progress Award, supported by International Emerging Film Talents Association.
As for me, I will be dreaming of Italy, and the film festival in Udine, the city and the boundaries it straddles with Austria and Slovenia, and waking up to curse, for the first time, this pandemic.