In a documentary created by a 77-year old experienced artist titled “A Story of a Widower”, the widower concludes a contract for a quasi-love relationship with a young woman he photographed. I thought he was an honest man. When one takes a photo of somebody, one always falls in love with the subject. Quasi-things and falsehoods often spawn truth. Dramas and documentaries are also born from this kind of boundary between truth and falsehood. The strange looking man chases the young girl around on the pretext of taking photographs—This, in fact, is the way that my predecessors, Alfred Hitchcock and Yasujiro Ozu, created masterpieces. It seems that video artists have finally begun to realize the secret of creation while producing videos among ordinary citizens.

I believe that this realization is one of the most important attainments of video artists. It can be dangerous, but its sharp edge can also make it possible to reveal dangers latent in modern society. The recent upheaval of young artists can also, I assume, be attributable to their understanding of video.

The way “A Day in Early Summer” relates to everydayness represents a big emerging movement where video artists have begun to flexibly express truths discovered in the worlds of literature and music in the world of video. Video artists, who are currently mere objects of photographs as in “A Story of a Widower”, have started to ask questions about the world. This has led to the creation of such sincere works as “Homeroom” and “An Assertion from a Modern 21-Year-Old Woman”, and culminated in “Blue Sky, Night Sky, Starry Sky,” a modern fantasy masterpiece. It has also turned India into an ordinary club in Tokyo and the filmmaker’s true identity, and, as in “Homeroom”, has made even a toilet an everyday object of quasi-love. Junior high school students, who used to believe that the world is something they can totally rely on, now have ability to doubt that belief. Likewise, they have also begun to reexamine their parents, schools, and friends. This is dangerous and sad, but this is how the world exists, and the current era requires us to reconsider what humans are. We may discover hope through observations and considerations because humans are thinking creatures. Can the young woman in “A Story of a Widower”, the subject ofphotographs and the victim, love somebody? We are all subjects of photographs and slaves in this society. By gaining the new “my video” perspective, video artists have started to reexamine the world and people. Is shooting a video the same as declaring love to somebody? Can we be saved from “emotional paralysis”? These are probably some of the questions posed by “Reunion after 59 Years Old.”

TVF is the only video festival in the world. This year marks its 30th anniversary. The path it has followed along these years was not easy, but TVF has been able to disseminate messages from Tokyo all over the world and gain much support. I think this is because of the foresight of the festival whose aim is to build a global family through video as well as the power of JVC as an organization. As TV media develop, their biased reporting is making the world smaller and more uniform. In contrast, TVF expresses the expansiveness of a world stuffed with numerous local citizen cultures. As the number of entries from other Asian countries is increasing, it is interesting to see many works reflecting citizen’s views on such social issues as the gap between urban and rural areas, communities, and destruction of families while vividly portraying people’s lives.

To me TVF is also a place to study society. One of the Video Grand Prize winners “The Last Chapter” discusses families centered on “I” who married a foreign man, and gradually makes it apparent that behind her failed relationships with her father lies the difference in their educational backgrounds.

Another Video Grand Prize winner “An Assertion from a Modern 21-Year-Old Woman” is a young woman’s diary-like self-portrait. Its style with an extremely positive attitude and Osaka dialect is fresh. This year again saw two Grand Prize winners, but we judges are not here to select the single best one. TVF can be described as a video jungle. Jungles are a mysterious place where varieties of vegetation, bacteria, insects, and wild animals live together. No creatures are stronger or weaker than others. They support one another no matter how long the dry or rainy season may last. TVF is like this kind of jungle where the audience can wander around viewing all types of video works. However, in reality, organizing TVF is not easy. I am proud of my work as a judge for this festival selecting various fine works symbolizing society today and our times. The Grand Prize winners are representatives of such works. This year there are many works focused on self-portraits, family, community, and education. My recommended works also include “Ladenhüter (Shop Owner)” while portrays a community formed by regular customers of a convenience store; “Don’t Forget” in which junior high school students examine society’s views on Hansen’s disease; “Tongmen Diary” depicting the solitude of old women whose families do not return to them even during the New Year’s holiday; and “The Dandelion Sister”, a philosophical clay animation.

After seeing all this year’s entries and casting the final committee, I am pondering once again what TVF is. After 30 years, the breadth of work and the variety of entrants have expanded greatly.  All the works were so good that I am even feeling more hesitant about writing comments than in any other year. I have my own style of facing works. When I view works, I let myself come face to face with each one by making my mind as blank as possible. I just let my senses lead me while leaving all my past knowledge and experiences behind. Then when I finish viewing each work, I ask myself whether I want to view it once again, but with somebody else this time. I look for somebody—my students or maybe someone I have met during seminars —to share the experience. Good works should be shared with as many people as possible, and the screening committee should work toward achieving this purpose. Works I recommend are, therefore, always those I want to share with somebody else. Whether my recommendations are suitable for the awards is determined by the main judge—TVF. Only the 30 year-old TVF knows what is most suitable for TVF.

Personally speaking, I felt jealous of “Ladenhüter (Shop Owner)” for its pleasant movie-like atmosphere. I was told after the screening that the film had been created by the same filmmaker who made “2 minuten” (2 minutes) submitted last year. I could hardly imagine how the 24 year-old artist, who had made a typical video portrait last year, had been able to produce this kind of totally different work. The film is about an ordinary, unattractive shop and its owner, shabby regular customers who come to the shop every day, and an unchanging everyday life. Small incidents occur, but life goes on as usual. I envy the artist for his ability to portray this monotony so charmingly. I was also amazed by “The Chronicle of a Drawing: Footprints of Time”, whose production must have consumed tremendous amounts of time and labor. I suspect that even the filmmaker himself was not sure whether he could really complete the work, and that he must have spent many days creating this animation stuck inside without going anywhere else! “The Last Chapter” and other videos TVF has chosen as  works representing this year are all great. From among entries created by filmmakers of various ages in different environments, we can still foresee a new horizon even 30 years after the inauguration of TVF. I would like to express my thanks to artists from around the world for allowing me to have wonderful experiences this year again.

There were many entries particularly from middle-aged and elderly people, teenage students, and young women. People in the prime of their working lives might be too busy to try and create a complete work of art. However, it is said that the grounds of kindergartens and elementary schools are filled with video camera-carrying parents on their children’s sports days, so many people, including working people, now possess their own video cameras. So what they need to create a video is not time or a camera but perhaps a theme and a motif that inspires them to do so.

As regards works created by middle-aged and elderly people, I felt the great pains taken by the filmmakers who must have spent considerable time on their works. As for works created by young women, I could feel their talent. However, although Japan seems to be now in the most fruitful video era with a lot of superior equipment developed and fewer areas where photography is prohibited than in other countries, there were no works that really amazed me. Meaningless 16 : 9 aspect recording, overuse of technical techniques (special wipes etc.). . . I had the impression that many entrants had been excessively reliant on the excessively rich functions of their cameras. The submissions from foreign filmmakers are gradually becoming clearly divided into propaganda and pure art, but their overall quality is almost the same as that in the past years. I had no hesitation about choosing “The Last Chapter” and “An Assertion from a Modern 21-Year-Old Woman” as the best works this year, and they were also selected as winners this year by the screening commitee.

I was just astounded by the diversity of entries this year as well as in past years. I believe that this diversity is the very charm of TVF. However, at the same time, this diversity also makes it extremely difficult to evaluate works from the same perspective and by the same standard. The perspective and standard also inevitably have to be diversified. It is very hard for the judges to narrow entries down to 30 award-winners, and many great works failed to receive awards. Among these works, I want to comment on “A Village with a Ford” and “Straight My Way.” Although they are totally different types of work, they both focus on, and carefully portray, something nonhuman—a shallow ford in the former, and tofu soybean curd production machines in the latter. They both, however, are comfortable to view and powerful enough to make us feel admiration for the lives of people associated with nature, culture, and civilization in the films. There are great works among those that failed to receive awards, and award-winning works are not necessarily agreeable. But this is something unavoidable. In fact, it proves the diversity of entries.

Shooting videos casually as if writing a diary or random thoughts on a notebook, expressing personal views frankly—not necessarily elegantly or in accordance with formality—in a way that is only possible through video, or perhaps using these techniques intentionally to make a semi-fiction. We judges pay attention to such personal forms of expression and possibilities when screening works, and this is one of the reasons we selected “An Assertion from a Modern 21-Year-Old Woman” as Video Grand Prize-winner. However, it cannot be denied that the work is somewhat less powerful than past Grand Prize winners of the same type.

The other Video Grand Prize-winner, “The Last Chapter”, is unquestionably outstanding in both content and way of expression. The JVC Grand Prize-winner, “Opportunities to Study Are Disappearing”, is also a great video that suggests a specific answer to the question “What is required of schools?” by focusing on the urgent problem of the abolition of night schools.      

Many submissions this year were created sincerely, soundly, and concisely as in other years, which I truly admire. However, it was a pity that there were fewer animations this year, and there were no works like “Mystery of Chinese Character Tests” entered last year that are innovative and prominent in all aspects of conception, controversy, shooting techniques, observation on people, and perfection.

New roots are firmly planted and extended in various directions—This is what I felt this year, and enjoyed myself very much.

First and foremost, the number of works through which filmmakers see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts has increased. In many films, we could also see filmmakers’ own lives behind their works.

There were many great works from junior high school students this year. Some portray their schools or their periphery, but there were even some that had made a step further to see a wider world. The students attach importance to “their own eyes” in their approaches, which I found quite interesting because their approaches are different from those of ordinary newspaper and TV journalists. “Lessons”, “Don’t Forget”, “From Sone Tideland”, and “Foot Matters” were impressive.

As regards filmmakers who are slightly older than junior high school students, this year saw many works through which they looked into their own hearts. “An Assertion from a Modern 21 Year-Old Woman” and “Homeroom” was very good in this category.

As for older filmmakers, they also take individualistic approaches in the way they see their own lives. “The Last Chapter” was excellent, and “To My Farm”, “The Truth of Country Life”, and “Garbage Collection Story” each had their own qualities.

Of all the submissions this year, I found “The Dandelion Sister” the most admirable. This young artist is promising, and I am really looking forward to his future. I decided not to recommend the work for the Grand Prize because it seemed to be slightly different in nature from the mainstream of TVF, but I am still not sure that my decision was right. The work was a masterpiece filled with a mysterious beauty.

“Ladenhüter (Shop Owner)” was also great. This is a masterpiece of a black comedy, but also works as a splendid satire on society in the 21st century. The vivid images of “Mutual Link” are also unforgettable. “The Chronicle of a Drawing; Footprints of Time” was an amazing animation. The deliberately colorless tone generates a rich imagery, and the fragmented memories of “time” that have almost disappeared are curiously beautiful. “WATER DRIFT” was also attractive, particularly where the fantasy of the young man is absorbed into fragments of his daily life as he puts a fantasy into writing.

TVF celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. TVF, which was inaugurated at the same time as the first VHS video recorder was released, has been supported by the creativity of entrants and the enthusiasm of judges. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to each of the creators of the 50,000 videos entered.

As for the entries this year, I was glad to know that media literacy education promoted by a teacher, Mr.Hayashi, at Nagano Prefecture Azusagawa Senior-High School, who led his students to create the Video Grand Prize-winning film “Mystery of Chinese Character Tests” last year, is now being implemented at many schools. I could also detect confidence  in the future in many of the works submitted this year.

“Don’t Forget”, a work created by Suginami City Higashihara Junior High School Broadcasting Club, skillfully expresses their views on the history of abuse and discrimination against Hansen’s disease sufferers. The film gradually heightens our sympathy toward the sufferers by alternately presenting the voices of the filmmaker and the sufferers. These young people, who are so deeply sympathetic with others, represent to me “hope,” “love,” and “assurance” for the future.

Among the works focused on  relationships between filmmakers and their families, “The Last Chapter” and “Reunion after 59 Years Old” were prominent. These two works make us think about what a family is, and realize the importance of deepening communication with the people around us. “The Last Chapter” concerns the filmmaker’s father, and “Reunion after 59 Years Old” traces the long journey of the filmmaker’s mother to find her father, who she had not seen since she was six years old. Although these films are similar in terms of theme, the outcomes are totally different. I was very fortunate to encounter these two works in TVF2008, and admire “The Last Chapter” for its perfection, and “Reunion after 59 Years Old” for, although rather coarse, its depiction of the never-ending love of the family on a grand scale.

“Opportunities to Study Are Disappearing” is a work of individual journalism. It is about a night school that openly accepts students with various personalities and backgrounds. While focusing on the students, the film discusses the purpose of education.

TVF opens up a new horizon in the world of video every year. I expect that “filmmakers’ pleasure in creating” will bring “joy of watching“ and “delight of communication” to TVF2009