Newsletter No. 772
News-Analysis
October 18, 2007

 

FILMS FROM THE ISLAMIC WORLD GARNERING ATTENTION IN TOKYO

A short article in Variety, an entertainment news agency, profiles recent efforts to bring more attention in Tokyo to films from the Islamic world. In my decade in this country, I haven’t ever seen much in the way of small independent theaters that showcase films from non-Hollywood sources, but maybe that’s either because I haven’t been looking hard enough or because I live in Kitakyushu and not Tokyo or Osaka.

Tokyo Festival Brings the Middle East to Japan
By Mark Schilling

Since its start in 2002, the Winds of Asia section of the Tokyo International Film Festival has had a reputation as an innovative showcase for pictures from East and Southeast Asia, particularly ones by younger helmers.

Taking over from pioneer Winds of Asia programmer Sozo Teruoka in July, veteran Asian film scholar Kenji Ishizaka has not discarded his predecessor's vision but rather expanded it. "A lot of festivals are introducing films from East Asia," Ishizaka says. "I want the section to also include Central Asia and the Middle East, where many exciting films are being made now."

As film coordinator at the Japan Foundation’s Asia Center for more than a decade, Ishizaka programmed the groundbreaking Asia Cinema Series and Arab Film Festival for Tokyo audiences while building a wide network of contacts in the Middle East and Central Asia. His selections this year include pictures from Iran and Egypt -- countries with well-established industries that have been thoroughly scouted by Western festivals -- as well as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the latter better known as the home for Borat than for local pictures.

"Japanese audiences don't know much about Islamic countries, period," Ishizaka notes. "So one of my aims, which I also had at the Japan Foundation, is to give them a better understanding of how people in those countries live, their different customs and so on. But the films themselves are interesting."

Ishizaka, however, is not neglecting East and Southeast Asia. "Malaysia is having something of a New Wave, with an upsurge of young directors making DV films," he says. "Filmmakers from the Chinese and Indian minorities are especially active."