Tokyo film festival will go ahead

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

TOKYO, SEPT. 26.The Tokyo International Film Festival will be held next month, the Director-General, Mr. Michiyasu Kawauchi, told a press conference. He said there was no question of cancelling the event, due to start on October 27. Even if a war were to break out in Afghanistan and a few guests were not able to come, there was no reason to cancel the festival.

Mr. Kawauchi, who has just taken over as Director- General, told the media that he would work to make the Tokyo Festival the most important in the world. Though it is now one of the 11 A-grade festivals, in the same category as Cannes, Berlin and Venice, the Tokyo festival is yet to gain the stature of its ilk in Europe.

With 5,000,000 yen of prize money offered to the best movie in the main competition, the Tokyo extravaganza certainly scores over the rest, at least here. However, Mr. Kawauchi is sure that his Festival will gain in other spheres as well. The Festival will open and close with animation works, a pointer to the growing popularity of comic characters, known as ``Manga'' in Japanese. Mr. Andrew Adamson's and Mr. Vicky Jenson's ``Shrek'' - which competed at Cannes this May, the first ever animated picture from Hollywood to do so - will start the nine-day festival. ``Atlantis: The Lost Empire'' will be the closing frame.

With 140 films from 24 countries to be screened in different sections, the event includes Mr. Murali Nair's Malayalam work, ``A Dog's Day'' in a non-competitive section. Two Japanese movies, ``The Lament of a Lamb'' and ``Kewaishi,'' will be part of what is seen as a largely Asian competition along with Korean, Chinese, Thai and Persian movies. A category exclusively dedicated to Japan's celluloid creations and a retrospective on Mamoru Oshii's films are also included in the programme.

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