Tokyo International Film Festival
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Tokyo International Film Festival 2024: Tsuta Tetsuichiro on Black Ox
Telling the story of a small, subsistence farming mountain community whose few remaining members keep drifting away to nearby cities, Tsuta Tetsuichiro’s second feature, 2013’s The Tale of Iya, drew upon his background growing up in rural Japan. “I was actually born near there,” he explained. “As I observed the lifestyle of the people of Iya, the idea came to me naturally to make a film set there.” After shooting his first feature on 16mm film in black-and-white, Tetsuichiro upgraded to 35m color for Iya, whose physicality throughout the seasons overwhelms with brutally immersive snowstorms and epic mountain panoramas. For his […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 7, 2024 -
In Transition: Tokyo International Film Festival 2013
The Tokyo International Film Festival is having something of an identity crisis. This year saw the arrival of Yasushi Shiina as the festival’s Director General. He acknowledged that the festival faced a list of problems. Chief amongst them is that despite it being the 26th year of the event, it hardly registers a blip on the overcrowded film festival calendar. “What I think is my job is that we tell the world that the Tokyo Film Festival exists in Japan and we let the world know that,” Shiina said. “We don’t want to be isolated.” He cited a number of problems […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Oct 28, 2013
