Home > Catalogue > Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale > 57 | 2021 > Negotiating ‘Asianness’ at the Tokyo International Film Festival

Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale | Vol. 57 | June 2021

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Research Article

Negotiating ‘Asianness’ at the Tokyo International Film Festival

Local, Regional and International Dynamics Through Programming Practices and Film Markets

Eugenio De Angelis    Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia    

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abstract

In this paper I will trace a brief history of major Asian film festivals to understand how the notion of ‘Asianness’ evolved over time and how it is expressed nowadays through programming practices and film markets. Then I will focus on the case study of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) as a problematic site where cultural and economic dynamics converge. As an A-category festival, TIFF has to balance its international status with regional relevance, negotiating ‘Asianness’ in a complex relationship involving the local film industry, since questions on ‘Asian cinema’ are deeply linked to the national. Finally, I will draw some conclusions, discussing how TIFF relates to other major film festivals in Asia, where ‘Asianness’ has been used as a shared effort to distinguish themselves from the paradigm set by European film festivals. However, this is an ongoing process, TIFF struggles to use ‘Asianness’ as a unifying element and the specific interests of each festival obstruct the possibility to create a more systematic trans-Asian model.

Published
June 30, 2021
Accepted
May 27, 2021
Submitted
Feb. 2, 2021
Language
EN

Keywords: Asian Film Festivals • Asianness • Tokyo International Film Festival • Film Festival Network • Festival Programming

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2021/01/023

Copyright: © 2021 Eugenio De Angelis. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.