Festival Data:

• Genre: Experimental - New Media (click to see)

• Competitive

Festival Website:

Festival Description:

The Image Forum Festival is produced by Image Forum Magazine Japan’s leading experimental film and video magazine. The festival runs from April 26th to May 5 in Tokyo, and moves on to Yokohama and Kyoto. Image Forum has been the leading organization for experimental film and video for over 30 years in Japan. They also screen and distribute domestic and foreign feature films. It began when Nobuhiro Kawanaka and colleague Katsue Tomiyama founded a media workshop under the name Japan Underground Film Center which came to be known as Image Forum and spawned both Image Forum Magazine and Daguerreo Press.

Part of the Image Forum legacy is that in 1980 the American Federation of Arts asked film scholar, Donald Richie, to create a film series focusing on the history of experimental film in Japan.  Richie worked with Katsue Tomiyama, then the director of Image Forum, to produce “Japanese Experimental Film 1960-1980,” two programs of short films that toured the United States in the early 1980s.