At the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF), held from 19 to 25 October, 32 Joris Ivens films were shown. In 1989 Joris Ivens had been invited to the first performance of the festival in Yamagata, but unfortunately died in the summer of that year. In 1997 the Ivens film The 400 Million, showing the consequences of the Japanese attack on China in 1938, was shown in Japan at the YIDFF for the first time. This year the Festival offered an extensive retrospective, apart from a cross-section of Ivens' oeuvre, also a view of seventy-five years of documentary history. More than 2500 people attended the screenings in this retrospective, which comprised a lecture and discussions every day. Besides supporting the programme the Foundation also contributed to the composition of the catalogue, which gives extensive attention to Ivens’s work. Already during the festival this catalogue was sold out, but it will be reprinted, and you will be able to order it through the website of the YIDFF (http://www.city.yamagata.yamagata.jp/yidff).
