Germany Strengthens Film Ties with Japan1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAs Germany and Japan celebrate 150 years of friendship, Berlin’s twin city of Tokyo will host the first Talent Campus in Japan during the renowned film festival TOKYO FILMeX from November 21 to 26.
Presented by the TOKYO FILMeX organizing committee, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, the Talent Campus Tokyo will invite about 15 talented young directors and producers from East and Southeast Asia to attend workshops, master classes and panel discussions with high-profile experts and filmmakers.
In 2010, a successful pilot programme, entitled ‘Next Masters Tokyo’, featured 20 young filmmakers from nine different Asian countries and regions. Experts included, among others, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Amos Gitai, and Iranian filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami and Amir Naderi.
Hou is an award-winning film director and a leading figure of Taiwan’s New Wave cinema movement. He generally makes rigorously minimalist dramas dealing with the upheavals of the Taiwanese (and occasionally larger Chinese) history of the past century by viewing its impacts on individuals or small groups of characters.
A City of Sadness (1989), for example, portrays a family caught in conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after World War II. It was groundbreaking for broaching this long-taboo subject and became a major success despite its seemingly non-commercial nature.
