Summary

Weather-wise this year’s HMD was not that great. In Tokyo we had a little rain at night, but our average audience increased to 27 (average capacity of venue was 39). Depending on the venue, the number of films shown varied from six to 15, running costs were from 0 yen to 30,000 yen (average 9,000 yen), and the number of volunteers was from three to twelve. We thank our international guests, Brigitte Paulowitz, John Stewart, and Quentin Turner at HMD Yanesen despite the fact the the event was monolingual. I hope they enjoyed the special home movie time created by our local rep.

We mainly deal with 8mm but HMD Yanesen and Nagoya had one 16mm each this year. The films HMD Japan is showing are increasingly from the old days. We realised that those venues holding HMD for a long time now have a very strong team of volunteers who do a great job. For the first time ever, HMD Misawa had outside screenings, which went successfully.

Through the mailing list, the reps talked a lot about how to take action against influenza (it was in the flu season, and there was a lot of hysteria about avoiding crowds in the media), and also about copyright, as one of the “best hmd” films had a scene showing a TV broadcasting “East of Eden” (1955).

Publicity

We put the HMD PR Video on YouTube (both original and english subtitled version) as our first attempt and it had over 700 hits. This video was made by our member Mariko Goda, who has been making our “Adopt-a-Film” PR for a long time.

All in all, we have to admit that this year was a bit quieter on the media coverage side. HMD Misawa and Hirowaki had big articles in the local newspaper after the event, and HMD Nagoya was successfully introduced in advance in Asahi Newspaper with a long interview with the rep, Satoe Tamura. Everyone loved this article as it explains how much fun she is having through the HMD activities and naturally shows the wonderfulness of film preservation. Eventually HMD Nagoya had over 55 in the audience, which was a record for them.

We got really excited when a passionate publicity person from Fujifilm Photomuseum came to visit us about their participation to HMD well in advance, in connection with their exhibition “Nostalgic Home Movies ― from the Zoetrope to Single 8 Film”. Unfortunately they did not do any special events related to this exhibition, and their ultimate decision was to pull out of HMD. I felt that in their rather small but beautifully done exhibition, 8mm films were totally in the past and we could just see them displayed as antiques. Yet Fujifilm Square in Roppongi is great place to visit if you have time in Tokyo, and don’t miss their fabulous museum shop!

According to Fujifilm’s press release dated 2nd June, 2009, Fujifilm is going to stop the sale of FUJICHROME R25N in March 2012 and FUJICHROME RT200N in May 2010. And Fujifilm’s processing service is going to end in September 2013.

All the photos from HMD Japan 2009 can be seen at: Flickr.

Networking

Suddenly from last year, a lot of regional film archiving projects are emerging in Japan. And Film Festivals in Japan are showing more and more interest in regional films. When they have symposiums, seminars or workshops, at least one or two FPS members go to see what’s going on, but it seems they are mainly focusing on the contents, digitization and how to make good re-use of old footage. We had never come across film preservation ethics or long term preservation efforts. I was invited to Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in October this year to introduce FPS’ activities. They also had home movie related screenings during the festival. I’m hoping that they will have HMD next time in 2011.

FPS is also getting involved in a new regional film archive project from next Spring in Bunkyo-ward, Tokyo (where FPS’ office is). So, we’ll keep making efforts to place emphasis on the preservation side of this sort of project. For the temperature controlled vault, our institutional member Kyoshin Warehouse Co., Ltd. is renovating their vault – used to be a storage for food – into a special vault for Audiovisual materials (five degrees). And we are ready to make a contract with them when it’s complete.

Reps and Volunteers

I especially wish to thank Asako Takemori (HMD Misawa & Hirosaki), Satoe Tamura (HMD Nagoya), Yuko Shiota (HMD Senju), Keiichi Shima (HMD Yanesen) and Nozomi Nakagawa (HMD Kodaira) for their cooperation and considerable input. It feels so great to witness their progress year by year. Nozomi is our accountant, and also taking charge of film inspection and film projection workshop for newcomers as a leader of FPS’ Small Gauge Dept. SGD is opening a new inspection room near the FPS office in 2010.

We had a reps meeting before HMD on 16th August 2009 (13 reps and potential reps attended), and will have another meeting after HMD on 28th November 2009 in ELMO headquarters in Nagoya, and best home movies screenings follow on the same day at Cultural Path Shumokukan – they have an English website here.

Volunteers:
(in Misawa)
Saiko Horiuchi, Hisashi Ando, Takeo Mochizuki, Kana Yamamoto, Sachiko Yamashita, Sakiko　Kimura, Ai Moriyama, Misato Chikayama, Eri Yamaki, Toshiko Shimokawa, Akiko Miura, Yuko Tamo, Yoko Matsuhashi
(in Hirosaki)
Satoshi Shibata, Keiko Saito, Masafumi Takebayashi
(in Senju)
Yasuhide Takanashi, Hidetoshi Sase, Idle Man
(in HMD Yanesen)
Satoko Ohashi, Sadanobu Iida, Mariko Goda, Chie Nagai, Ryuji Nakayama, Shigeki Arimitsu, Mari Kawamoto
(in HMD Kodaira)
Mikio Yamazaki, Yuko Kodama, Keiko Imai
(in HMD Nagoya)
Hiroki Yamashita, Kazuo Shinato, Miyuki Takeda, Yoko Fukada, Nobuaki Hara, Ayumi Hara, Yoji Hasegawa, Saki Tanaka, Masako Kitamura

Best HMD 2009 from Japan!

MISAWA
Organizer: Asako Takemori
Venue: Misawa City Library
Mikawame Public Adult Lecture
R8, BW, Sil., 4minutes, 1965
from Misawa City Hall

This is one of the 25 regular 8 films discovered in Misawa City Hall. All of them were in boxes but the descriptions on them did not match the contents of the film. The original box of this film says “Cultural Festival” but there was Mikawame Community Center shot in the film, so it is supposed to be in the box saying “Mikawame Public Adult Lecture”. Bashful local ladies at the commemorative photo-op at the end of the lecture are impressive.

HIROSAKI
Organizer: Asako Takemori
Venue: Menbo Takeya – soba restaurant
Odate; Sketch of the Snow Country
S8, Color, Sil., 8minutes, year unknown
from Kazuo Yoshida

This film consists of three parts; In the main street of Odate city, Akita pref, you’ll first see the “Snow Vehicle”. Then, a festival called Amekko-ichi (Candy Fair) in this same street. Every February they have this seasonal tradition with the belief that if you eat candy on the day, you’ll never catch cold. And the last part of the film is about the film owner’s wife Kimiko and icicles, which was the audience’s favourite. Mr Yoshida is scared of heights, and asked his wife to deal with the big icicles at the second floor, which is beautifully shot. She passed away last February right before the Candy Fair.

SENDAI
Organizer: Hidenori Sakamotoi
Venue: Sendai City Museum of History and Folklore
Yellow Patrol
R8, Color, Sil., 8minutes, mid-1960s
from Yasutoshi Ishikawa

A rapid increase in car accidents accompanied the increase in the number of cars around 1962 to 63, Nippon-unyu (shipping company) started educational activities to promote road safety. They created a theme song “Good kids’ road is good way to go home” and assembled “Yellow Patrol” to do a campaign combining traffic rules and gymnastic exercises. They visited schools from Hokkaido to Kyushu with the cooperation of local police departments. This film is a record of their visits to schools in Sendai and Morioka.

SENJU
Organizer: Yuko Shiota
Venue: Senju Yanagicho Ju-ku Center
A Launch Party for Nissan’s “Datsun”
W8, BW, Sil., 3minutes, 1958
from Moriko Oishi

This film is about a launch party for Nissan’s “Datsun” in 1958 on the rooftop of Mitsukoshi department store. In those days, department stores were trendsetting places, and what was special about this car was that it used a plastic body for the first time in Japan. They own a car factory (now it’s a car shop) and shot a lot of footage in the factory such as “A Day in the Factory” or “Three-wheeler Inspection”.

KODAIRA
Organizer: Nozomi Nakagawa
Venue: Gas Museum
1977 Okutama, Festival of Dolls, Piano Recital
S8, Color, Sil., 4minutes, 1977
from Masako Miyatake

Kodaira-city is located in the heart of greater Tokyo and Bridgestone Tire Factory is in the very center of the city. This film shows a girl brought up in the area in Spring 1977. She spends New Year’s day with her family in the company’s recreation facility, and wears traditional kimono for the dolls festival in March, and is in a brand new dress for a piano recital. She shared with the audience a lot of memories from her childhood.

YANESEN
Organizer: Keiichi Shima
Venue: Miyanaga Kaikan
Hiro-chan’s Wedding Party
R8, BW, Sil., 8minutes, 1971
from Etsuo Watanabe

Wedding party in 1971, Sendai at an old style Japanese restaurant. You will see a slightly nervous groom pouring Sake for the relatives, and a shy bride is bashful at the movie camera, a grandfather in formal Japanese dress sings the traditional wedding Noh chant “Takasagoya” and towards the end, a drunken attendee starts the perennial “catching loach” dance. Although it’s a silent film, you can gradually hear the cheerful sound as the party goes on.

NAGOYA
Organizer: Satoe Tamura
Venue: Cultural Path Shumokukan
New Year 1969
S8, Color and BW, Sil., 15minutes, 1969
from Katsutoshi Kitazawa

At the beginning, you’ll see the mochi pounding tradition at the film owner’s house. They go to the shrine later on – another typical thing to do at Japanese New Year. On the 3rd January, they visit one of their relatives in Tokyo by driving “Subaru 1100 sports”, and it turns into a roadmovie. It shows Tokyo University’s campus where the student activism over Yasuda-kodo symbolized the year 1969. and also surroundings of Minamiazabu area in Tokyo. The beautiful snowcapped Mt. Fuji and the sports car are wonderfully shot at the end on their way back from Tokyo.

*HMD Osaka, Nishifunabashi, and Sangenchaya are not taking part in best HMD screenings. We’ll make a Best HMD 2009 from Japan DVD as usual as our activity record and promotion tool.

About Mr. Abe

The legendary collector Yoshishige Abe died on 9th February, 2005, at the age of 81. According to Mainichi Newpaper issued on 11th February, 2005, Abe had been in hospital for a long time and passed away there.

The legendary collector Yoshishige Abe died on 9th February, 2005, at the age of 81. According to Mainichi Newpaper issued on 11th February, 2005, Abe had been in hospital for a long time and passed away there. In the article, the main focus is on the Korean film “Arirang” (1926) out of his collection, but the reason why he has become a “legend” among film fans was as much to do with the rumour that he stored copies of almost all the Japanese films which were believed to have been lost forever. There is no definite data about the survival rate of Japanese silent films but it’s said to be less than 10%, which means, throughout the 100-year history of Japanese film, the films we can actually see now are just a small part of the whole. However, of the 90% of lost films, Abe claimed to have almost everything. Abe cast a “great shadow”, single-handedly filling in the huge blank part of our film history.

This “shadow” was too huge for what he was saying to be believed. People say that you cannot accept a fact, even if it’s the truth, when you face up to something way too big. Besides, Abe rarely tried to show his films to others. People who knew him through the rumours were expecting his films to be open to the public, but at the same time, they thought that it was all probably a lie or a big illusion.

In the Fall of 2002, I visited Abe at his house in Higashi Osaka with a video camera, to try to uncover the truth. He was living with his wife in a shabby looking house surrounded by trees. The collection, was stacked all over, from the garden to the entrance of the house; not films but things like electrical devices and miscellaneous antiques etc., and I had to go through the narrow gap between them to get into the house, where I saw the legendary collector in his kimono, smiling and welcoming me. I was invited into a room six tatami mats large, but except for one tatami’s worth of space, his things were stacked from floor to ceiling. The room behind was for the Daimyo Clock collection, and he said there were more rooms but I couldn’t see them at all, because of the incredible amount of his stuff. Every room except for the one I was in seemed to be filled to overflowing with his collection. It had reached the limit, Abe said. He was in trouble but with a very happy face.

I looked around the house but couldn’t find any stack of films. As motion picture films easily deteriorate, they were stored in a climate controlled vault, he explained. He had however one reel of 16mm film, which was the only part of the “Abe Film Collection” I have seen. Instead, he showed me the very thick catalogue of his film collection. Anyone who visited him could have got this far. Just like everyone else probably was, I felt shocked and stunned by it, almost as if the world was flipped over. In the catalogue, there were pages of, no, actually files full of the names of outstanding works which were believed to have been long lost. In addition, he said some of the collection were original camera negatives(!). Of course I found the name “Arirang” in it. Not necessarily the whole world, but the whole film world would be lost for words in the face of his collection. I was excited and said, “it’s going to be incredible news if these can all be shown to the public”. Abe smiled and said spitefully, “I’ll tell you one good thing, “A big story is a fib”".

In the end I couldn’t find out if he was a real “legendary collector” or just a legend. We exchanged letters a few times after that, and I visited his place again, but ended up not seeing him since then. I cannot help regretting this. The last letter I sent him was about the setting up of FPS, but I’m not sure if he read it or not. I only knew him as a gentleman with a dry sense of humour, but some people say he was a cold-blooded businessman type and some say he had something to do with the dark side of Japanese society. In any case, I wanted to know him better as he was a man with quite a distinguished character, including a lot of contradictions and mysteries.

The article in Mainichi Newspaper says his huge collections (including his collections other than films? I don’t know) are, in the absence of any heirs, going to be stored in the state coffers, and with regard to the films, National Film Center, Tokyo is going to take on the research. This mammoth project, 50,000 reels, 120 tons of films (if they really appear), would shine a light on the darkness of our film history, and take more than ten years; including restoration and preservation work, maybe more than 10 years. If possible, FPS would gladly be involved in it.

Lastly, there is our rule that, “We never collect or possess any films at all, except for the films we temporarily have for research and preservation purposes”. This is because we clearly separate our role from that of a collector or archive, and also it’s a reflection of our idea that film is not a personal matter but a public matter: films should be shared in society at large. In that sense, it looks like our idea and that of a film collector such as Abe’s contradict each other, but actually they do not. Our idea is based on the definition of film as culture, and film as cultural heritage, but people like Abe were keeping films which used to be considered little more than a fairground side-show. Regardless of the ignorance of society, he quietly spent his money without hesitation long before such an idea existed. I have nothing but admiration for the tremendous volunteer work done by collectors and I don’t want their efforts to be in vain, as we, I mean society as a whole, have to preserve films. Abe will be watching with spiteful eyes to see if our activities are genuine or fake, I believe. Even so, “A big story is a fib”. He will laugh at me if I’m such a big-mouth. For a start, I shall take on whatever small jobs I can do, and try my best for film preservation. (Takeo Nagano)

Does the “Abe Film Collection” really exist? FPS will update the mystery of Abe from here on.

Additional Note 2005.9.18

Evening edition of Asahi Newspaper dated 2005.09.08 showed the article entitiled “In a secret film collection, what’s inside?”, which is an interim report by National FIlm Center, Tokyo. According to it, “the whole contents will not be reveiled until a few years later”, but “at the moment, it seems not to be as great as the rumors suggested”. The content is “mainly documentaries” and it is hardly expected that long-lost films such as “Arirang” would be discovered, in senior curator Akira Tochigi’s opinion. However, as long as “it cannot be denied that there might be films stored in places other than his house”, the possiblity of future discoveris will not be 0%. At least, this mystery of Abe was the subject of newspaper articles, the importance of film preservation reached the public through the media. Even if “the big story was a fib”, Abe caused a stir in film preservation. We continue looking for the follow-up story with keen interest.