2020
Uno Port Art Films (UPAF) is a biennial summer outdoor film festival at the Port of Uno in Tamano, Okayama, near the famous Naoshima Island known for its contemporary art. This year, in light of the circumstances, we will be holding the festival online during September-October 2020, using Vimeo on Demand as our streaming platform.
UPAF believes in the power of film as an art form to nourish the soul. It brings together films from around the world that powerfully reflect the lives of filmmakers and show places and people whose lives are rarely seen in the films that are widely distributed in Japan. With the theme of “Life, Art, Film,” UPAF, which turned 10 this year, has been presenting edgy yet tender independent films from all over the world. This year has been hard for all of us, and so we have set the mini-theme of this festival to be “One Among Many” as we reflect on the time in which we are living in our respective places.
The Inaugural UPAF Japanese Shorts Program
This is our glorious first Japanese Shorts Program. We called for applications in May, and had 72 responses within a month. We were pleasantly surprised and encouraged to see so many independent filmmakers in Japan! We are screening the 5 most powerful films among them. All the films are in Japanese with English open caption subtitles (audio descriptions and speaker IDs are occasionally [Read more...]
White Sun (सेतो सुर्य, Japan only streaming)
When his father dies, Chandra must travel to his remote mountain village after nearly a decade away. He was an anti-monarchical Maoist partisan fighter in the Nepaliese Civil War that lasted from 1996 to 2006 and ended with the removal from power of the authoritarian king. Little Pooja is anxiously awaiting the man she thinks is her father, but she’s confused when Chandra arrives with Badri, a [Read more...]
TEEN UPAF
This year’s Teen UPAF streams four powerful videos made by teenagers in New York City during the COVID-19 Lockdown. All in English (with some Spanish) with Japanese caption subtitles. This program is free of charge and is available on both Vimeo and YouTube. Read on to learn about the films and young filmmakers.
Tribute to Mel Baggs
Mel Baggs, a legendary autistic blogger and artist passed away at the age of 39 on April 11. 2020. I learned about Mel’s video “In My Language” 2 years ago from my former student now colleague Jordan Lord’s article which they wrote for my Third Cinema class at Hunter College. When I was looking for work for this edition of Uno Port Art Films, I remember how powerful it was and wondered if we could [Read more...]