TIFF wraps for another year

The Tokyo International Film Festival and TIFFCOM market have wrapped for another year. Things continue to improve at both of these events -- they've come a fair way since the early 2000s, particularly in the last few editions under Tom Yoda's chairmanship.

The above iPhone snap is from the closing ceremony yesterday (Oct. 31). You can see 98-year-old director Shindô Kaneto (awarded Special Jury Prize for Post Card / Ichimai no Hagaki 『一枚のハガキ』) on stage in his wheelchair and cool black leather jacket. There was a great amount of respect in the air, including from jury head Neil Jordan who recalled seeing a life-changing Shindô double-bill at the Berlin fest when he was 16.

TIFFCOM's project market, Tokyo Project Gathering, was quite useful to really define where Yellow Earth (see Aug. 24 entry and TPG page) needed to go, and not go, next. It's a big project but things are positive. Hope to keep posting regular updates.

With my Screen International cap on I wrote some TIFF/TIFFCOM coverage alongside our deputy Asia editor Jean Noh, who covered the market and new UniJapan Entertainment Forums (UEF), one of which I moderated. Following are links to our stories. Most of it is subscription only but some if it might be accessible through Google news or elsewhere on the web:


- "Intimate Grammar takes top prize in Tokyo, China has strong showing"

- "'Busy' TIFFCOM sees visitors and exhibitors increase"

- "Yuya Ishii picks up award as Tokyo Project Gathering wraps"

- "Joint Entertainment gets Memory Loss in Toyko"

- "TIFFCOM panelists give advice to European filmmakers in Japan"

- "Gaga adds new Kore-eda film to sales slate"

- "Local and international stars on hand as Tokyo kicks off 23rd edition"

Our editor-in-chief Mike Goodridge enjoyed his first trip to Tokyo, moderating a UEF discussion with 13 Assassins producer Jeremy Thomas just hours after he arrived. As I tweeted some days back, Miike Takashi is busy shooting the Thomas-produced 3D remake of Harakiri (new title TBA) in Kyoto.

There will also be a stack of TIFF film reviews from our chief critic Mark Adams going up soon. Good times eating, drinking and singing with the crew. On a personal note, it was great finally meeting people face to face that I had been communicating with over the net in the past year.

As far as films I saw during the festival, as usual it was a pathetic amount due to everything else going on. Aside from opening film The Social Network (superb) I chose some titles that would be hard to see on the big screen again, including two films by Turkish auteur Reha Erdem and independent Filipino drama Halaw (aka Ways of the Sea). Halaw director Sheron Dayoc will participate in TOKYO FILMeX' Next Masters Tokyo 2010 program later this month.