Yubari Fanta 2013-2015: Part 1

I had intended to write a long article about Yubari International Film festival; however, since it seems I’ll never find the time I’ll just post a very quick introduction with some pictures.

The festival is held in the small town of Yubari in February, when the whole place covered in snow. It’s a pretty beautiful view with all the snowy mountains. The city streets alone are good enough a reason to visit Yubari since they are packed with beautiful old movie billboards from samurai films to yakuza flicks and Charles Bronson movies. I have counted at least 50 of them and trying to find all of them is part of the fun. I’ll post some pictures in the next post.

The festival itself focuses on small genre and indie films, from splatter to drama. Most of the films are world premiers of titles you’ve never heard about before – and may never hear about again. Consequently the average level of the films may not be as high as on some other festivals, but there are many small treasures to be found every year.

Another highlight is the insane side-program. If you attend a screening of a martial arts film, you can probably expect a live martial arts demonstration. If you attend a screening for a special effects splatter film, you may see the film’s makeup artist holding a 2 hour workshop on how to turn an actor into a zombie. And if you attend anything with regular quests Yoshihiro Nishimura or Noboru Iguchi, you should expect total insanity. Seriously, half of the madness that goes on in Nishimura and Iguchi events cannot be posted publicly, with the two gentlemen running around naked in snow being among the cost casual and innocent of their acts. Others include a human sushi plate (a naked woman, of course), Iguchi and Nishimura dancing to a AKB-48 pop song while dressed in girls’ school uniform, and SM torture competition hosted by Eihi Shiina – just to give a few examples of things that kind of can be mentioned publicly.

“Cruel!”. In front of the venue for an insane 2 day Yoshihiro Nishimura program.

Yui Murata mini concert

Nishimura, Iguchi and Kayano dancing to ABK-48

Iguchi and Rina Takeda in Iguchi event

Nishimura, Iguchi, Asami and others

The oriental Tom Cruise

Makeup effects wizard Soichi Umezawa does his magic on Momoko Kuroiwa

Band playing at the closing ceremony

Of course there are also some relatively down-to-earth Q&A sessions, like

Asami, Kudando Mitsutake and Dean Harada at Gun Woman premiere

Maki Mizui and Yoshihiro Nishimura at Kept (Ra) premiere

And what’s best, there are no red carpets in Yubari. Filmmakers and the audience hang out together, sit in the audience together, and constantly run into each other everywhere. In fact, most of the time when you’re sitting in the audince you later discover the guy next to you was the film’s director/actor/cinematographer etc. Or you’re eating delicious deer in the stove party and only later realize the cook was Masanori Mimoto…