Japanese lesbian video is where it's at! Proud to host the Japanese
Film and Video Contest
for the fourth time in a row, the Festival
has in the past screened
winning videos on the last day of the Festival.
While many of these works have later gone
on to screenings at lesbian and gay film festivals
throughout the world, including San Francisco,
New York, Paris and Brazil,
how many of us in Tokyo have seen them?.
The
past three contests have seen a huge number of submissions by
lesbian video-makers,
and awards to lesbian works far outnumber those for works by
gay men.
To celebrate the strength of Japanese lesbian
video-making,
and to provide something of a retrospective of the best works submitted
to the contest program over the years, we have gathered seven
Japanese lesbian videos
from among the past three years of submissions.
In
*Summer*, doll couples take center screen relaxing at a resort.
*Tamago* is one woman's stark questioning of why she gets her
"monthly thing" only on days
when her girlfriend comes to stay. In part chronicling the sizzling
August 1995 day of Tokyo's
Second Lesbian and Gay Parade, *One Shadowless Hour* uses extensive
interviews to give voice to
the strength of Tokyo's lesbian community. *Skip* is a delightfully
kitsch computerized
animation of the trademark "toilet girl" stepping right
on out. Shot in a beautiful black and white,
*A Certain Day* captures the fantasies of a woman lost in thought,
while in *Closets Are for Clothes*,
a closeted lesbian, increasingly claustrophobic in her constrained
surroundings,
musters all her courage to come out to a male acquaintance. Finally,
last year's Grand Prize winning
*Wounded Bird* is a story of two passions
that accelerate through a Tokyo night,
featuring fast-paced photography and the
hippest of soundtracks.
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