People pushed to move, or left without anywhere to belong, through no fault of their own form the through-line of this year’s Women’s Empowerment section at the Tokyo International Film Festival, according to programmer Shimizu Yu, who also oversees the festival’s Youth strand. Now in its third year, the seven-film section includes Manuela Martelli’s “The Meltdown,” Anuparna Roy’s “Lovers in the Blue Night,” Zou Jing’s “A Girl Unknown” and Isabelle Stever’s “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming.” Also selected are Meritxell Colell Aparicio’s “Far From the Trees,” Yang Kaijing’s “Super Lucky Girl” and Muriel d’Ansembourg’s “Truly Naked.” “The films depict those who fall through the cracks of an unstable political climate or social systems – those who are struck head-on by structural contradictions, and at times exposed to crises that threaten their very dignity,” Shimizu tells Variety. Women’s standing has improved so little over the long sweep of human history that addressing structural problems in such a short window is extremely difficult, she says, adding that filmmaking is hard for anyone and harder still for women.
It is a small section, but I believe that the very scale of the challenges means there is still much we can do, and that there remains untapped potential here.” The team is putting real effort into events that run alongside the screenings, and plans to grow the section in the coming years by moving into areas TIFF has not explored before. One of those events, “Her Gaze,” this year turns to women cinematographers from Japan and Taiwan. It is overseen by Kondo Kanako, the section’s event producer, who last year spotlighted women’s film festivals in East Asia and has been looking for ways to build solidarity among women filmmakers across the region.
Festivals, Kondo argues, can lift up women working in a range of positions behind the camera, and not just directors. Shimizu, whose own perspective comes entirely from screening practice, counts that hands-on knowledge of filmmaking as one of the section’s strengths. Shimizu has also programmed experimental cinema at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the work included collaborating with DINAMO, an international network of experimental film distributors and archives.
That experience continues to shape her approach to archival material. Shimizu notes that everyone carries a different idea of what cinema is, and that films made with a theater in mind are becoming unfamiliar to many. The three titles in this year’s Youth section – Jacqueline Lentzou’s “A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra,” María Aparicio’s “Sometimes Sadness, Sometimes Rebellion” and Lorenzo Ferro and Lucas A.
Vignale’s “The River Train” – were picked to make audiences rethink the medium. She sees possibility in something a regular theatrical release cannot offer: the chance at a festival to encounter “not only what you set out to see, but also the surprising, and at times the irregular.” Like Women’s Empowerment, the Youth section runs its own slate of events designed to give the films context.
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