Yamagata Documentary Dojo is a four-week residency program for Asian filmmakers in Zao hot springs, Yamagata, in northern Japan. The program is a retreat — an opportunity for filmmakers to be isolated from daily life and enabled to focus on reworking their works-in-progress. Meanwhile, for the bustling first week, Japanese filmmakers and mentors from around the world are invited to workshop and share from their careers. This program presents shorts by past dojo participants, many of whose work is personal. Image-making is fundamentally the treatment of a reality that’s past — the creative process allows the rebirth and investigation of memory in a variety of ways. Time is sometimes necessary to recognize and process what we care for and why.
with English & Bahasa Indonesia subtitles
Duration: 63 minutes
free entry – limited / please be on time
minikino.org/time
AMBIGUOUS LOSS
YAMADA Toru/ 2019/ 0:15:00
Eight years from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Watanabe family revisits their printing factory and house in Namie, Fukushima. Located directly downwind from the nuclear power plants, the town was evacuated immediately after the disaster and still lies within a no-man’s exclusion zone. After much debate, the family has decided to tear down the old house, but as the day nears, they are faced with their hesitations, feelings of loss, and frustrations on how their once peaceful life has taken a turn.
JUJUBA
IKEZOE Shun/ 2018/ 0:08:00
People can never really understand each other. The shiny red skin of the jujuba fruit brings back childhood memories of my Sichuan-born Chinese stepmother. Using expired Single-8 film stock, this autobiographical story of my memories matches emotion with blurred, grainy, and dreamy images. The expiration date of the film stock is the year she walked out on us.
IN THE WOODS
OIKAWA Natsumi/ 2019/ 0:05:00
Paying homage to Lithuanian poet Jonas Mekas’s poetry and film style, the filmmaker makes a film-diary on behalf of Mashiko Hisashi, an old and destitute former yakuza who has drifted to Kotobukicho, the day laborers’ neighborhood in Yokohama. On the soundtrack we hear him reciting Mekas’s poem “In the Woods” as her camera travels to places where he lived throughout his life.
FLASH
ODA Kaori/ 2014/ 25 min
In the hazy light of a Balkan summer, the filmmaker with her camera takes the long-distance train to an unknown destination. The journey evokes memory and emotions as layers of time, sound, light, and shadow foreground and recede against the window pane, inviting eyes and ears to wondrous and liberating depths of imagination. Where do we come from, where are we going?
FIRST SNOW / HATSUYUKI
HUANG Hui-Chen/ 2019/ 0:01:46
Every year, the onset of winter is near when Yamagata households start to pickle greens. Here at Matsukaneya Inn, the mistress of the house knows that mustard leaves must be salted like falling snow before the barrels are put away for fermentation.
WINTER BLOOM
Kris ONG/ 2019/ 0:02:16
Mr. and Mrs. Nagase are Yamagata farmers. They love making and serving fresh soba noodles to friends, and teaching children about safflower (benibana) culture. The flower petals produce a red dye that was a major local industry in the 18th century.
RUMINATING
Waraluck HIRANSRETTAWAT EVERY and Duangporn PAKAVIROJKUL/ 2019/ 0:05:23
Yamame is a goat. Her owner is Toru, an ordinary young man whose family runs a farm. Toru wants to become a writer. He is asked by the filmmakers to write about Yamame.
PHYSICAL & ONLINE SCREENING SCHEDULES
- FRIDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2020, 19:00 – 21:00 (UTC+8)
After screening Q&A with ODA Kaori, YAMADA Toru
Moderator: Asako Fujioka & Fransiska Prihadi - SATURDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2020, 19:00 WITA
After screening Q&A with IKEZOE Shun, OIKAWA Natsumi
Moderator: Makiko Wakai & Fransiska Prihadi - SUNDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2020, 19:00 WITA
After screening Q&A with
* Director Huang Hui-Chen & editor Lei Chen-Ching; Taiwan team of “LOMA-Our Home”
* Director Waraluck Every (Salee) and editor Duangporn Pakavirojkul (Bee); Thai team of “Audacious Dreams of Kith and Kin”
* Director Kris Ong; Singapore filmmaker of “Sorry No.55”, exchange program with Objectifs
Moderator: Asako Fujioka & Fransiska Prihadi
LOCATION
MASH DENPASAR Art House Cinema
Jl. P. Madura no. 3 Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
location map: minikino.org/mashdenpasar
*limited to 17 audiences per slot
