This 9th Osaka European Film Festival is the climax of a year of research and preparations, a year fuelled by our wish to offer the Japanese public the opportunity of encounters we hope will be both enriching and moving: encounters with cinematic works, with ideas, with stories, and indeed with history itself; encounters also with personalities from the fields of film and music who, motivated by a desire for mutually rewarding exchange, are making the journey to Japan for dialogue with audiences and professionals in this part of the world.

Once again, it is with a concern to keep up with the diversity that constitutes the richness of European cinema that we have put together the programme for this yearﾕs Festival. This diversity is fully expressed in the variety of lengths and styles of the works; of languages and subjects; but also through the variety of moods, chosen settings, points of view, and genres used. Some of the films and programmes have set out to be different to the point where they have actually - and happily - become unclassifiable.

It is indeed difficult to ﾔpigeon-holeﾕ in a particular category a film such as The Discovery of Heaven, which strives to combine genres in a subtle way in order to create its own. Unclassifiable, even indefinable, is a work such as The Winged Migration (Le peuple migrateur), whose poetry and originality confirm the determination of its director-producer to set himself apart from the frameworks imposed by the film market. As for the viewpoints in the realization and set-up adopted by the ’documentary’ War Photographer, they show the charisma of the protagonist, photo-journalist James Nachtwey, to such an extent that he ends up, paradoxically, assuming the characteristics of a hero of fiction.

No less imaginative are the short films. With a passionate inventiveness that rejoices the heart, their makers demonstrate how to make the most of the economic limits, and at the same time, freedom, imposed by this particular genre.

These examples are just a few of the titles from this yearﾕs programme. But all of the works selected were chosen in the knowledge that they deserve to be brought to the attention of the Japanese public, and that each one offers the reflection of a particular requirement, ambition and coherence.

Our work was cut out in finding the perfect combination and most advantageous order for these cinematic works which, in their diversity, complement and answer one another. Our chief ambition was, once again, to draw attention to a cinema which is still inventing new forms, which still believes that it can lead us to look at our societies in a new way and to consider, or reconsider, our situations as human beings. A cinema which, rich in its pluralism, often reaches towards the universal. An ambitious cinema which dares to open a ’dialogue’ with its spectators and which, although perhaps unable to change the world, will, we are convinced, be able to change a little part of ourselves.

On behalf of all its organizers, I wish to thank here all the people - the artists and the technicians, the representatives of organizations in both the private and the public sectors - who have made possible this 9th Festival. In conclusion, I would like to welcome our guests in the hope that the films with which they are associated will enthuse our Festival audiences and convince them of the enduring power of European Cinema.