This year, Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) celebrates its 25th edition and will hold commemorative programs, including a three-day screening of six Japanese films from the Showa Era (1926-89) in the very Showa-esque district of Nihonbashi.
"It's our way of connecting Japanese viewers and having people get in touch with their inner Showa," says TIFF publicist Hideko Saito. "The youth of today may not be familiar with those times, but people over 40 are bound to remember. It's one way to get conversations going, and to bring people together."
The origins of the film festival go back to the years immediately following World War II. "People wanted to celebrate peace, to bask in its glow and steep their minds in the greatest escape hatch known to mankind — the cinema." Famed director Akira Kurosawa said that in 1994, and it's an admirable description of a film festival's function.