Programming for JFF 2003, as it turned out, was a rather straight forward affair. For that year marked the centennial of Ozu Yasujiro's birth. As did many festivals and film societies around the world, we selected 6 of his representative titles from within the Japan Foundation Film Archive.
However, as a tribute, it seemed too one-dimensional in just screening Ozu's works. I began to think: what else can we do to add some perspective? While researching, it dawned on me that some of Ozu's biggest admirers were film-makers from outside of Japan, like Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Wim Wenders. Indeed Mr Hou was commissioned to shooting a film in Tokyo to commemorate Ozu 100. Wim Wenders, on the other hand, had already made a road documentary in search of Ozu's Tokyo.
After visited Goethe Institut's on-line catalogue and confirming that TOKYO GA was in its collection, I gave a call to GI Singapore with which SFS had a good working relationship. To my pleasant surprise, GI was so supportive that it shipped in the print and cleared the screening rights, at no cost to the festival.
Having settled the tribute component, I began to look into putting in some variety. In past years, because of constraints of budget and screening venue, JFF had been featuring titles that were in 16mm format and sourced within the Embassy and the Foundation's archives. For a change, I began to explore the possibility of including titles that were in 35mm format and to be obtained commercially.
We did have one major constraint, however: Budget. With zero dollar in hand for programming, the new component of the Festival would have to be self-liquidating. It had to either generate enough revenue via ticket sales, secure sponsored money or both. There was not enough time to seek a generous sponsor. So the only alternative was to sell ticket and hope that box office would be strong enough to offset all expenses.
The paid-admission model in itself was not uncommon for any film festival. It was however a departure from previous JFF in Singapore which had always been free-admission. In fact, the Ozu component remained free-admission. Fully aware of the potential pitfalls that audience may not reject paying or are confused between the two components (one free-admission while the other not), we nevertheless decided to proceed in experimenting.
I was also aware of the high costs in securing and shipping in premiere releases from oversea distributors. Because of the prohibitive courier charges (35mm prints weigh more than 20kg) and screening fees, more often than not the ticket sales alone at festivals would not be enough to cover the costs- notwithstanding that JFF was run, and continued to be run (for the next 5 years, at least), by an all-volunteer team.
With the aim of lowering costs, I began to look at previously released but lesser known titles by local distributors for some ideas. As a programmer for SFS, I had previously worked with a distributor known for its non-mainstream and 'alternative' interests and obtained a list of titles handled by them. Going through the list and aided by researching through the internet, I quickly found some Japanese titles that were suitable for the Festival. They includes two titles directed by Fukasaku Kinji and Moonlight Whisper directed by Shiota Akihiko.
Fukasaku, the versatile director whose career was lately revived by Battle Royale (though he was better known within Japan for Yakuza-theme films he made in the 70s), had just passed away in early 2003. It seemed timely to have a 'Director-in-Focus' segment in which two of his films, Lovers Lost and The Geisha House, could be screened and hopefully arouse audience's interest in his other films. Also appealing to me personally was 1) that Lovers Lost starred Matzuzaka Keiko and young Sanada Hiroyuki- two very accomplished actors and 2) it was adapted from a novel that together with Muddy River and another book formed the River Trilogy. Muddy River was made into a film that I have seen and was deeply moved.
I had previously seen Moonlight Whisper at SIFF (Singapore International Film Festival) and liked it. I figured it deserved a widely audience and by re-introducing it, more Singapore audience would notice the talent of Shiota Akihiko.
I called the distributor to offer an affordable hiring fee and confirmed the 3 titles.
Not contented with featuring just materials sourced locally and wanted to gain experience in dealing with foreign distributors, I proceed with shortlisting titles from oversea. Fully aware of the high costs involved, it was a risk that we had to take at least once in order to learn. Upon recommendation by Lung Hsiang and urged on by Chee Yen, I contacted the Tokyo rights holder of Millennium Actress, the visually stunning animation thatchy saw at the SIFF earlier. After some correspondence via e-mails, the title was also secured.
There was another constraint that needed ironing out- the venue. SFS had been working with Golden Village for years on other screenings so it was natural that we spoke with GV and quite effortlessly secured the slots for the inaugural ticketed component. The free-admission component would continue to be held at the auditorium of Japanese Association, as did previous years.
The bonus of working with GV came in the form of Twilight Samurai. The Yamada Yoji film was picked up by GV for theatrical release and came to my attention when talking with them. I offered to premiere the title at the festival before its general release and received a positive answer.
The programme for JFF 2003 was thus locked down. What followed was a lot of coordinations in ensuring the Festival ran as smoothly as it can be. And after it was over, I was relieved to learn that we did not burn a big hole by including the ticketed component. Instead, with the box office and after offsetting all related expenses, we ran a modest surplus of around S$500.
With that as seed money, as miniscule as it was, I vowed to plan for an improved JFF 2004. Indeed, some of the ideas for 2004 had already been geminating......
Flash Snippets:
The Free-Admission tickets were painstakingly prepared by Chek Mong who also commission the first JFF trailer.
Pui Kwan, Chek Mong, Andrew and I were visiting all the Japanese Language Schools that we can find and dropping off the Festival program. That became customary in future years.
There was a later follow-up screening along the theme of Ozu. On 12 December 2003, both his birthday and the day he died, some of us got together and screened another documentary on Ozu- someone even bought a cake (Was it Shirley?).
Screening of Lovers Lost, for some of us (no names mentioned), was the highlight of the Festival- for the wrong reason.
