News

In 1967, a man was murdered in the Fukawa district of the Ibaraki Prefecture town of Tone, and two people, Shoji Sakurai and his former classmate Takao Sugiyama, who had been arrested in connection with another incident were served fresh arrest warrants for robbery and murder. Investigators obtained “confessions” from them but they protested their innocence during their trial. In 1978, their life sentences were finalized by the Supreme Court. Sakurai was released from prison in 1996, and married his wife Keiko three years later. He finally won an acquittal over a decade after his release, despite Sugiyama passing away in October 2015. In August 2021, Sakurai marked a landmark victory in a damages suit against his prefecture and the state, with a high court ordering compensation of 74 million yen, acknowledging an illegal investigation by police and prosecutors took place.

My Anniversaries is screening at Nippon Connection

Kim Sung-woong, who had filmed Sakurai on previous...

The Japanese judicial system is one with many faults. The 99,9% conviction rate, the existence of the death penalty, the way the judges never contradict the prosecutors and the police, since this guarantees their career, all create a number of problems, which have essentially deem it a rather unfair one. None other case than Iwao Hakamada’s has brought to the light all those issues so eloquently, as the former professional boxer was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 mass murder that became known as the Hakamada Incident, and on March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified him as the world’s longest-held death row inmate. Even more surprisingly, in March 2014, he was granted a retrial and an immediate release when the Shizuoka district court found there was reason to believe evidence against him had been falsified. Louis Dai highlights both the case and the aforementioned issues in the most eloquent way.

‘Searching for the Tassie Tiger’.

Screen Australia and Vice have named Searching for the Tassie Tiger as the winner of annual pitching competition Pitch Australiana, held at the Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc) in Melbourne in early March.

The creative team – director Naomi Ball and producers David Elliot-Jones and Louis Dai – will receive $50,000 in production funding and their short documentary will be released through Vice’s global digital network, and broadcast on Sbs Viceland.

Searching for the Tassie Tiger will explore new evidence and a growing civilian movement that are challenging the long-held belief that Tasmanian tigers are extinct. The documentary will follow Neil Waters, a middle-aged gardener in remote north-east Tasmania, as he quits his day job and commits his life’s savings to search for the ancient animal. Waters is the impassioned creator of the ‘Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia’ Facebook page which is leading an Australia-wide grassroots effort to rediscover the tiger.

Wurandon Mariwili.

Vice, Screen Australia, and the Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc) have selected four finalists for the $50,000 documentary funding initiative, Pitch Australiana.

Pitch Australiana provides early career Australian filmmakers an opportunity to collaborate with Vice in telling a story that speaks to communities, individuals, perspectives and subcultures that are overlooked or ignored in mainstream media.

The winner of this year’s competition will secure $50,000 of funding for a short-form documentary to be released on Vice.com as part of the digital documentary series Australiana which is seen in 35 countries, as well as airing on Sbs Viceland.

Finalists will compete for the prize in a pitching session in front of a panel that includes representatives from Vice, Screen Australia and the wider documentary community. This live pitch session will take place on March 4 during Aidc 2020 in Melbourne.

The four finalists will also get to develop their pitch in advance of the Aidc competition with writer,...

‘Cleaning Trauma’.

Four filmmaking teams will square off for the chance for $50,000 in funding and their documentary to be released through Vice at this year’s Australian International Documentary Conference (Aidc).

This is the second year that Vice, Screen Australia and Aidc have run the documentary funding initiative, known as Pitch Australiana. It aims to provide provides early career Australian filmmakers an opportunity to collaborate with Vice in telling a story that speaks to communities, individuals, perspectives and subcultures that are overlooked or ignored in mainstream media.

This public pitching session will take place in front a panel that includes representatives from Vice, Screen Australia and the wider documentary community.

Last year’s winner was director Inday Ford and producer Dylan Blowan’s Shooting Cats: Australia’s War on Feral Cats, an ob doc that explores the catastrophic impact feral cats have on Australian wildlife and the complexities environmentalists face...

In the era of reality television and social media, it seems easier than ever before for everyone and anyone to have 15 minutes of fame.

It was a curiosity about this idea of accessible celebrity that inspired three Melbourne-based filmmakers — David Elliot-Jones, Lachlan Mcleod and Louis Dai — to head to Japan, where foreigners often score stardom.

Now in post, the trio's documentary Big In Japan explores what fame is like for an ordinary person, and the motivations behind those who want to become famous.

The three co-directors, who operate under the umbrella Walking Fish Productions, made their first film back in 2012: an interactive doco for Sbs, Convenient Education..Armed with enough money for new equipment, they then moved to Japan for two years to begin their next project..

The idea behind Big in Japan was a .fame experiment. with a simple goal: to try to make Elliot-Jones famous.

Elliot-Jones told...