[ Finished! ] 9/3-11 :
Uno Port Art Films Online 2022

Uno Port Art Films (UPAF) is a DIY outdoor summer film festival/screening series that appears biennially around the Uno Port, in Tamano-city, Okayama, Japan, which is a town in the mainland facing the calm Seto Inland Sea, only 20min by ferry to the world famous Naoshima Contemporary Art Site. Our big theme has always been “Life, Art, Film.” We aim to introduce rare films that have been highly recognized in the world for their artistic merits but don’t get commercial distribution in Japan due to their regional, racial, or cultural backgrounds. So UPAF’s films tend to be made by filmmakers from Asia, Africa, Middle East, Latin America, or various minority comunities in the West. We held UPAF almost every year at a huge vacant lot by the Uno Port until 2016, but the town changed and we lost access to the lot. After traveling to Okayama City and even to Tokyo (and online only in 2020 due to the pandemic), we are back in Uno Port, our home base, this year and finished the in-person portion on 8/11-15. This site is a special site for our online portion (9/3-11, Japan time). If you’d like to see the works that were available only at our in-person event, please see our official website.

The loose mini-theme of the 9th UPAF is “the Shape of Care.”

Care could mean to take care of someone, cherish a community, really to take care of ourselves (but not being able to), feel as if being taken for granted, receive, give, share, etc. The share of care can be a spiral going towards somewhere, a bouncing pendulum or a seesaw, or going one step forward and two steps backward… what shape would you imagine? During the Corona which could isolate us, I really appreciated my neighbors and my neighborhood community. At the same time, I lost a few good friends but couldn’t go see them. I felt sad that I couldn’t see them and give any care, and felt guilty. We provide care… for whom? Perhaps for ourselves. As we curated this year’s program, I thought about those things, then I started to feel the shape of the films too. I wonder what shape you’d feel from watching those films.


Line Up

All films have English subtitles (if not in English) as well as Japanese captions. UPAF translate and subtitle many of the works since many are Japan premieres. To enjoy them with as many people as possible, we chose to put SDH (subtitles for the Deaf and hearing-impaired). You’ll see the speaker IDs and sound effects on screen in Japanese. Sorry we don’t have the manpower to add English captions. Many of the online programs are available worldwide. Please share the info with your friends around the world! We welcome your comments on films or on us! Please leave comments on vimeo, email to info@unoportartfilms.org, or use the Audience Award Voting Form to share your precious views. We will deliver your feedback to the filmmakers.

9/3 (Sat) – 11 (Sun) All day, Japan time