"Is it not
a joy when
a friend comes
from afar?"
(The Analects)

Welcome! The Festival is in its seventh year now, covering six days over

two weekends all at our favorite Spiral Hall, but this time we've added

the 6th floor to our tried and true 3rd floor haunts. And of course,

we're on again in Osaka with another QFF-sponsored program.

In both Tokyo and Osaka, we'll be screening films just in from the cutting table,

as well as shorts from the film archive. All in all, it adds up to 23 programs

of 63 films from 15 countries, an unprecedented line-up of shorts and features!

Yet, what really sets this year apart is a series of unique programs that

we've concocted to vie for your attention: a special collaboration with

Brazil's MIX Festival, a sampling of British gay TV, and a selection of

French HIV/AIDS-themed shorts that will head off each program. And we're

looking forward to even more submissions to this year's Japanese film and

video contest ...(You still have time! The deadline isn't until 30 April!)

The Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is back bigger and

bolder than ever!

Did you recognize my epigraph above? Anyone who ever went through the

Japanese educational system will probably remember studying the above lines

from the Analects in a high school classics class. The teens are years of

groping in the dark, a period where our appetites, our will to know more,

and our sexual desires grow in leaps and bounds. That is exactly where

you'll find our Festival now: dazed by the sudden opening up of

possibilities, of identity, and of directions, our sexualities in flux.

But then, identities are always in flux--change is hardly the province of

only our teenage years. As adults, we regularly go back to those years and

reinterpret them--"That's when I was ..." --and, in doing so, we construct

the base for our selves of today. Precisely because they are in flux, they

can't be categorized orexplained away quickly.

In September of last year, NHK broadcast an episode of "Middle School

Diary" with a story about two boys falling in love (bravo!); what we see

there is not about memory, but about these boys confronting the

here-and-now of the reality in front of them. This same September is also

the month The Association for the Lesbian and Gay Movement (OCCUR) finally

and decisively won its court case against the Tokyo Metropolitan

Government. But at the very same moment, in South Korea, the First Seoul

Queer Film Festival was banned by government authorities on its opening

day. Identities are in flux. We must not constrain their swing.

The Film Festival greets its seventh year. And backing up the explosion of

energy seen in this Festival's scope and its selections is our most

committed group of sponsors ever. Of course, none of this could have been

accomplished without the hard work of many volunteers; likewise, many of

our programs were achieved only with the cooperation of other festivals and

curators around the world.

I'm not really a devotee of Confucius, but there's no mistaking that a

friend coming from afar is a splendid thing. Those coming long distances

to see the films, those who take time from their busy schedules, people who

brave long lines ... Thank you! We have invited directors and programmers

from around the country and the globe. And, one more person, one friend

who's now far away from us, Teiji Furuhashi. Timed to match our Festival,

Teiji's video installation "LOVERS" (a Canon Art Lab Project) will be on

exhibit in Spiral Hall's First Floor Atrium. I am truly, truly happy at my

fortune--to share the space with this beautiful work on "love."