In Conversation: From Archive to Screen – Presenting and Preserving Independent Cinema
About the talk
Bringing together filmmakers, moving image artists, and film archives as part of the Reciprocal programme, this conversation explores independent and unconventional approaches to moving image making across different contexts of production, circulation, preservation, and presentation. As the notion of independence continue to evolve across both cinema and artistic practice, the discussion considers how such works push against conventional understandings of film and archival practice.
The representatives from the Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive and the Asian Film Archive will also reflect on the challenges of preserving, contextualising, and bringing these works to audiences today. Moderated by Dr. Mark Player, independent film scholar.
About the speakers
Ashish Avikunthak (India)
Ashish Avikunthak is an Indian filmmaker and scholar whose rigorous and meditative works draw from ritual, mythology, performance, and Indian philosophical traditions. Often resisting conventional narrative structures through long takes, repetition, and durational strategies, his films explore themes of time, corporeality, religion, and death. His debut feature Nirakar Chhaya (Shadows Formless, 2007) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, followed by the acclaimed Katho Upanishad (2012), Rati Chakravyuh (2013), Kali of Emergency (2016), and Glossary of Non-Human Love (2021). His films have screened at major international festivals and institutions including the Berlin International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou. He is currently Professor of Film and Media at the University of Rhode Island.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, director Ashish Avikunthak is unable to be present for the post-screening discussion.
Daniel Hui (Singapore)
A graduate of the film programme in California Institute of the Arts, Daniel Hui is one of the founding members of 13 Little Pictures, a critically acclaimed independent film collective in Singapore. He has made four feature-length films — Eclipses (Pixel Bunker Award for International New Talent, Doclisboa IFF 2013), Snakeskin (Special Jury Award TFFDoc, Torino FF 2014; Award of Excellence, Yamagata IDFF 2015; Special Jury Mention, RIDM 2015), Demons (In Competition, Kim Jiseok Award, Busan IFF 2018; Berlinale Forum 2019), and Small Hours of the Night (Rotterdam IFF 2024).
Kaori Oda (Japan)
Kaori Oda is a filmmaker and artist whose work explores audiovisual and cinematic expression, tracing the invisible histories inscribed in landscapes and human lives.
Oda participated in film.factory, founded by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Her feature debut, Aragane (2015), received a Special Mention at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. Her subsequent works, Cenote (2020) and GAMA (2023), have been widely acclaimed internationally. Her latest feature, Underground (2024), shot in subterranean spaces across Japan on 16mm film, was selected for the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival.
Alongside filmmaking, she also produces and exhibits paintings and moving-image installations.
Takashi Ito (Japan)
Takashi Ito is one of Japan’s most significant experimental filmmakers and a key figure in the country’s avant-garde cinema. Influenced by his mentor, avant-garde pioneer Toshio Matsumoto, while studying at the Kyushu Institute of Design, Ito emerged in the late 1970s with a distinctive cinematic language that combined stop-motion photography, long exposure, and recursive spatial constructions. His breakthrough works Spacy (1981), Thunder (1982), Ghost (1984), and Zone (1995) are widely regarded as landmarks of experimental cinema, noted for their hypnotic explorations of space, memory, movement, and perception.
In 2021, Ito directed his first feature-length film, Toward Zero, which received the Shuji Terayama Award at the Image Forum Festival. Over the course of his career, his works have screened extensively at international film festivals, museums, and cinematheques, including retrospectives at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the British Museum, and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
Chew Tee Pao (Senior Archivist, Asian Film Archive)
Chew Tee Pao has been with the Asian Film Archive (AFA) since 2009. As Senior Archivist, he has led the restoration of more than 30 films, developed AFA’s collections, and curated retrospectives and public programmes that bring archival works to wider audiences. He has represented AFA at international conferences and forums on film preservation and advocacy, and has contributed writings to NANG magazine (Issue 8, 2020) and the anthology Singapore Cinema: New Perspectives (2017), where he co-authored a chapter on independent digital filmmaking and its archival impact.
Eijun Sugihara (Curator, Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive)
Eijun Sugihara joined the Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive as a curator in 2023. He previously held programming and curatorial roles at the former art-house theatre Auditorium Shibuya (2011-2014), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], and Aichi Triennale 2019. Parallel to the curatorship, he is a producer of independent films; his filmography includes Sho Miyake’s Wild Tour (2018), Kaori Oda’s GAMA (2023), and most recently, Oda’s Underground (2024) and Nao Yoshigai’s Masayume (2026), both of which premiered in the Berlinale Forum. He has also curated various installations, including those by the filmmaking collective Kuzoku, such as Hidden Journey of a Thousand Miles by JRP (2016) at YCAM and ILHA FORMOSA (2023) at the Sapporo Cultural Arts Community Centre (SCARTS).
About the Moderator
Mark Player is an independent scholar who specialises in East Asian cinema, with a focus on Japanese amateur, underground and independent film cultures. He is the author of Japanese Cinema and Punk: Intermedial Exchanges (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), as well as numerous academic articles and book chapters on Japanese film and other media. He previously taught film at the University of Reading, UK, on world cinema, film festivals and film practice.
About the Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive
Established in 1996, the Fukuoka City Public Library Film Archive (FCPLFA) is an affiliate of the International Federation of Film Archives and houses more than 3,300 titles in 35mm, 16mm, and digital formats of moving image works, representing over 30 Asian countries and regions from Japan to Turkey. These include films that are presented through the Focus on Asia Fukuoka International Film Festival. The FCPLFA collection stands as an important cultural resource that preserves and shares the region’s cinematic histories with future generations. These films are accessible to the public through screenings and feature programmes at Movie Hall CINÉ-LÀ in Fukuoka.
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With support from Nagase Film Foundation
This talk is part of the programme Reciprocal 2026. For more on the programme. Please click here.
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