This is the inaugural year for Uno Port Art Films. Let’s see what happens! The reason we have decided to do UPAF is because, as independent filmmakers living in NY for the past two decades, we know how hard it is to show the films created only through years of spending resources and energy on the projects in which you kept believing.
In order for a film to reach an audience in a faraway country, it first needs to be selected and awarded at some major international film festivals, then attract interest from a foreign distributor, and be discussed and judged based on its profitability in the target country. Only then will the selected few be shown at movie theaters or sold in the DVD market. Many only get shown in big cities like Tokyo and Kyoto. In a place like Uno, where there is no movie theatre, people have to only rely on the domestic DVD market to find good foreign films. As a result, people often only get to see commercial films. We watch many great films in NY, and very few will land in Japan. So we thought, “how about we bring them here, directly, without going through any central forces (like festivals, distributors, etc)?” There are so many meaningful and enjoyable films that never land in Japan. It’ll be good for our fellow filmmakers as well as the town people, no?
