Tokyo International

TIFF this year was held primarily at the Bunkamura complex, which opened earlier in September. New programs for the festival included "Nippon Cinema Now", with its focus on young Japanese film directors, and the "Asian Film Week", with its emphasis on providing an overview of Asian cinema, and were indicative of the great strides the festival has taken in its desire to speak with a specifically-Asian voice.

The poster for the festival was a conceptualized depiction of a fairy-tale princess beckoning moviegoers to her castle. The newly opened Bunkamura complex in the cultural heart of Tokyo indeed became, as the poster suggested, an enchanted castle where people could face wondrous new works of cinema art.

Film historians and critics from seven countries were invited to "International Film Symposium Tokyo 1989"where they looked back on a century of filmmaking and discussed such issues as what makes a film a classic and whether films have been preserved properly. Perhaps not coincidentally, the collaborative "JACCS Card Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival" featured an overview of Georges Méliès, indicating that with the last decade of the twentieth century nearing, there was a strong desire to take a fresh look at a past century of cinema culture.