I’ve been back from Tallinn for about a week now, and am still basking in the memories of an absolutely wonderful long weekend at the first EVA – East via Asia! Japanese film festival in the city’s majestic-looking Kinomaja cinema. You don’t need to scroll too far down this page for some background on this event. Basically I worked on the programme while the wonderful organisers Helen Merila and Piret Mägi were at the coal face, sorting out the venue, the publicity, the concerts, the catering… basically all the difficult stuff! And this meant a pretty relaxing but thoroughly enjoyable couple of days while the event unfolded, a long weekend blessed with bright blue skies and sunshine away from a damp and drizzly London.

Against the beautiful backdrop of Tallinn

This was my first time in Tallinn, and I absolutely fell head-over-heals with the city. It must be one of Europe’s best kept secrets, and I hesitate to sing its praises too loudly lest it become totally overwhelmed by tourists. It’s already suffering to some extent from the usual curse of jeering drunken idiots on organised stag parties that Britain seems to have a predilection for inflicting on Eastern Europe, something I’d already just encountered in Wroclaw the month before. Fortunately these are largely confined to the overpriced tourist and titty bars in the Old Town area, and it’s not difficult to wander off the beaten track and find quieter spaces to explore.

Cultural rivals - the Stalker Film Festival was going on simultaneously in the 2011 European Capital of Culture where parts of the film were shot

Tallinn is Europe’s 2011 City of Culture, and there were a whole host of events going on over the weekend that threatened to overshadow EVA. One of these was the Stalker film festival celebrating Tarkovsky’s classic Soviet sci-fi, parts of which were shot in the city, and featuring a number of examples of films of the type that it has now become acceptable to refer to as “slow cinema” – Bela Tarr, Sergei Paradjanov, you know the type. Luckily, it didn’t seem to draw too many, if any, potential viewers away from our festival, which was amazingly well-attended and well-received. Nothing is too far apart in Tallinn, it seems, and on one of the mornings before the screenings I managed to wander down to the film’s locations, and onwards down to the dockland/beach area, along with my old friend Yoshihiro Ito, whose Vortex and Others surreal shorts programme we screened. The last time we’d met was about 18 months ago in Tokyo, and before that, he was there with his films and disarming grin at the first ever Shinsedai, one of the first ever events I documented on this website in this post from 2009.

Drunken yobs in Tallinn: Saturday night ended in tequila, with Yolanda, Tim Grabham and Yoshihiro Ito, and me staying sensibly behind the camera

Another guest from rather less further afield (i.e. London) was Tim Grabham, one of the directors of the beautiful documentary KanZeOn, accompanied by his charming companion Yolanda. While this film was included in the programme for this year’s Shinsedai, this was the first time Tim had actually been present at one of its screenings, which was effectively the European premiere. It went well, incredibly well… as did Yoshihiro’s films, and that night, we celebrated with an extended tequila session before winding up down at the port area again, at an open air gig by local punk outfit Chungin & The Strap-On Faggots, one of the bands at the festival’s opening night punk concert, along with J.M.K.E., local legends with a fanbase that stretches as far as Finland. Apparently punk is to the Estonians what rockerbilly is to the Finns, the ultimate anti-authoritarian musical stance during the twilight of the Soviet era and still going strong – the fact that I managed to catch Chungin & The Strap-On Faggots twice during my brief stay merely highlighted this fact. You can read Tim’s account of his screening and beyond on the KanZeon website.

Again, I’ll end by saying a huge thanks to our wonderful hosts in Tallinn, Helen and Piret. It’s looking like we’re going to do the event again next year, so I can’t wait to head back, who knows… maybe even before the next fest…

Posted at 15:47 on 06 September 2011 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• Chungin & The Strap-On Faggots
• East via Asia
• Estonia
• J.M.K.E.
• Kanzeon
• Shinsedai
• Stalker
• Tallinn
• Tim Grabham
• Vortex
• Yoshihiro Ito
• Zipangu Fest

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So I’m in Estonia at the moment for the first day of East via Asia (at one point known as East by Northeast), the first festival in the country devoted to independent Japanese cinema, jishu eiga and experimental animation. It seems I’m not alone either, as numerous academics who have made Japan their business have also converged on Tallinn for the Japanology conference currently running here – I hope at least some of them make it to our screenings.

Best laid plans, and all that, but I had been hoping to give readers of this website the heads-up on the festival some time beforehand, but somehow, what with my being wrapped up in New Horizons in Wroclaw, Poland, at the end of last month and numerous other things since, the best I could manage was a few tweets. Frustrating for those who might have wished to combine a trip to this beautiful city with some cutting edge films from Japan, but I know the team on the ground here, Helen Merila and Piret Mägi, have been pretty active in spreading the news locally, so I’ve no fears that local audiences won’t come.

The gorgeous facade of Tallinn's Kinomaja, host to the first ever East via Asia

The festival is taking place in the Kinomaja on Tallinn’s Uus tn 3 – one of the most beautiful cinemas I’ve ever shown anything in. If the programme looks familiar, that’s because I was invited to curate by Helen after she saw the line-up for last year’s Zipangu Fest in London. Most of the titles we’re screening here have screened either in Toronto as part of Shinsedai, or at Zipangu Fest, and those that haven’t played in London yet might well give you a bit of a clue as to what to expect for the second Zipangu Fest, which I can now reveal will be happening 17-24 November at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) – only a bit of a clue however, because we have a whole lot more planned which I personally can’t wait to announce.

I’ll be joined out here tomorrow by Yoshihiro Ito, director of the marvellously surreal Vortex and Others shorts programme which we screened at the first ever Shinsedai back in 2009 and Tim Grabham, one of the two directors of the amazing new documentary on the role of sound in Japanese Buddhism, KanZeOn. Before then, I’ve got an evening of Estonian punk to savour for the Opening Night party at the Kinomaja!

Anyway, I’ll repeat it down here for those who might not have been paying attention, this year Zipangu Fest will take place 17-24 November at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. If you’re interested in signing up for our press releases or getting on the general mailing list, visit Zipangu Fest’s press section. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Hope to see you in November!

Posted at 14:34 on 25 August 2011 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• animation
• East by Northeast
• East via Asia
• Estonia
• jishu eiga
• Kanzeon
• Shinsedai
• Tallinn
• Yoshihiro Ito
• Zipangu Fest

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Well, I am back at home now after a joyous weekend at the inaugural Shinsedai Festival, and I must say, the experience was wholeheartedly a positive one. I know I promised to do daily updates during the fest, but with so much crammed into such a short time, this sort of fell by the wayside, and after wrestling with jetlag and getting back to the huge pile of things that urgently needed attending to back in London, it’s only now that I’ve had time to post my thoughts.

Peaches organizer Atsuko Ohno raising a kampai with Vortex director Yoshihiro Ito

It’s always pretty tough launching a new film festival, especially one that doesn’t deal with cult or genre material, but all in all, attendances were good, the comments on the response forms positive, and everyone seemed to have a great time, myself included. I was mightily impressed with the calibre of the audience, who seemed intelligent and receptive to new and sometimes challenging material. I guess the choice of venue, the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre was a key factor in this: the audience members either had firsthand experience of Japan or a genuine interest in the culture, meaning that films such as Yutaka Tsuchiya’s The New God, Yasutomo Chikuma’s Now, I… and Hiroki Iwabuchi’s Freeter’s Distress got the audiences they deserved and provoked animated discussions after the screenings. A lot of people really had their eyes opened by these titles, which show a completely different side of Japan to the one portrayed in the films that usually circulate in the West.

Akinoh Kondo's animated short The Evening Traveling

On the other side of the coin, we had more experimental material. Yoshihiro Ito’s Vortex and Others shorts programme and Aruongaku, a concert film on the avant-garde filmmaker/musician Masakatsu Takagi were met with a unanimously positive response. (I should add to European readers with a taste in such material, many of these films received their first international screening at the world’s greatest Japanese film festival, Nippon Connection in Frankfurt).

With festival co-organizer Chris Magee, and Thunderfish star Junko Kimoto at opening ceremony.

We were also lucky so many of the filmmakers came out to Toronto to join us too. Yasutomo Chikuma, Yoshihiro Ito, Peaches festival organiser Atsuko Ohno, animator/illustrator Akino Kondoh, and the Thunderfish-gumi of director Touru Hano, cinematographer Tetsuhiro Kato, and leading lady Junko Kimoto (pictured here quaffing sake with me and Chris Magee during the opening ceremony) all had a great time chatting with the audience, and participating in the panel discussion about the state of independent cinema. It’s a near certainty that we’ll be able to build upon this success for next year, with an even bigger and bolder programme, but I should add at this point that none of this would have been possible without the generous sponsorship of Subaru Canada (oh that UK-based companies were as generous!), the guiding hand of the unsung hero behind the scenes James Heron (rather like the cat in Hong Kong Phooey) and his colleagues at the JCCC, as well as the smiling, ever-helpful legions of volunteers. And of course, a huge thanks to Chris Magee of Toronto’s own J-Film Pow-Wow for his sterling work in bringing this all together in such a short time, and my personal thanks to him and the delightful Polly for putting me up for the weekend and keeping the whiskey flowing. Until the next time…

Posted at 20:35 on 26 August 2009 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• Akino Kondoh
• Aruongaku
• Chris Magee
• Freeter’s Distress
• Hiroki Iwabuchi
• Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre
• JCCC
• Junko Kimoto
• Masakatsu Takagi
• Nippon Connection
• Tetsuhiro Kato
• The New God
• Touru Hano
• Vortex
• Yasutomo Chikuma
• Yoshihiro Ito

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