VIFF 2011 INTERVIEWS

Two major points that are unique perhaps to this film and serve to educate the public: the first is that this film portrays teens who are younger than the characters in most coming out films I’ve heard of that have been screened worldwide; the second is that in Japan right now, and over the past few years, there are a number of celebrities who are female in a male’s body (women who dress as men), the opposite to what I have experienced. This is widely known in Japan—Japan is learning that there are these people—but there is very little knowledge of the reverse.
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Asato Ikeda: the intersection of Japanese + Inuit art

Houston is THE most important figure when it comes to Inuit art, and as such he is regarded highly in the far north. As you say, it is interesting that James Houston didn’t have either cultural background, but given that abstract, expressive qualities of both Inuit and Japanese art fit the aesthetic taste of Western modernism, it isn’t too surprising that he was interested in non-Western art.
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Asahi Portrait at Nat Bailey Stadium Long Overdue

The Asahi was a Vancouver minor league baseball team during the 20s and 30s made up of Japanese Canadians. At a time when sports was dominated by Caucasian players, the Asahi competed against the best teams of the day, winning 5 consecutive Pacific Northwest championships in the thirties until the team was disbanded and the players interned after Pearl Harbour. It marked the end of a glorious era in Vancouver sports history.
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CrossCurrents

Bent on some crazy mission to save that fleeting illusion, if only for naïve, dream-struck kids, yours truly must confess here and now to having resorted once or twice to the “urban-guerrilla-street-art-like” tactic of quickly and surreptitiously transferring that ugly placard from the seat to the top of the piano. Apparently someone (a security guy?) does check, because once I casually sauntered by later to look, and the placard had been put back on the seat, as if to proclaim: “We’re in charge here!"
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