Japanese Lesbian Video

Summer
Director: Takako Tajiri(1995 8' video color)

TAMAGO
Director: Montage M(1996 5' video color)

One Shadowless Hour
Director: Narusa Sasagawa(1996 29' video color)

Skip!
Director: Kazuko Uchida(1997 1'20" video color)

One Day
Director: Cristi Collins(1996 video color)

Closets Are for Clothes
Director: Dezu(1995 15' video color)

Wounded Bird
Director: T-Sue(1997 16' video color)

*All with Japanese and English subtitles


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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