The Historical Roots of the Regional Film Festivals and Their Publicness

Abstract

Regional film festivals, such as Hakodate Illumination, Akita-Jumonji, Aomori, Kansai Queer, and Yufuin, have been held all over Japan and their number was reported to exceed one hundred in 2007. Unlike well-known international film festivals, they tend to screen existing commercial films relinguishing premiere status and do not try to discover or promote new film talents. Their unique feature lies in the fact that local film fans carry out all the planning and management, offering new places for cinema’s reception other than movie theaters. In the film festivals, whether they are regional or international, question-answer sessions and symposium are often conducted after the screenings under the bright light and they add a sense of publicness, depriving the audience of the anonymity of a movie theater. This paper explores the historical roots of Yufuin Film Festival, the oldest film festival in Japan that has served as a model for other film festivals, and analyzes the characteristics of the space of the regional film festival in light of the concept of publicness by drawing on Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt.