About the Festival

About TOP 30th Anniversary: Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025

Aiming to re-examine the increasingly diversified means by which moving images are created and appreciated, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions has been dedicated to moving images not as an exclusive category, but with an eye to the various alternative views it embraces. The festival continues to serve as a platform for promoting and sustaining alternative visions that art and moving images can inspire in us. In the years since its inception, as the festival has featured moving images from Japan and abroad while presenting a new theme with each edition that asks anew “What is a ‘moving image’?”, the circumstances surrounding moving images have changed dramatically, while the frameworks and technologies that define moving images have diversified.

Amidst such change, the festival’s 2025 edition will aspire to an ever deeper investigation of the nature of moving images by exhibiting new works by four finalists in the Commission Project (3rd floor exhibition gallery), which is returning for its second edition. This exhibition, along with several new programs connected to this year’s theme, will further reinforce the role of the festival as a forum for moving images.

This Year’s Theme
Docs: Images and Records

A document is a record of fact-based information, traditionally in the form of words but more recently also as images such as photographs and moving images. The word “documentary,” meanwhile, has come to be used not only as an adjective meaning “factual” or “consisting of documents,” but also as a noun referring to a film expressing facts.

The Lumière brothers’ Exiting the Factory (1895), which is a record of people leaving a factory, is widely recognized as the starting point of the history of motion pictures. People at the time were astonished to see scenes from their everyday lives being recorded and replayed before their eyes as if the events were actually happening right there. Today, 130 years after the invention of moving images, it is entirely unexceptional for people to record and share their daily lives through photographs and videos. Meanwhile, the definition of a photograph has been expanded to include digital images and that of moving images now encompasses digital video; in digital form, these media can be manipulated more freely than before, resulting in a more complex and ambiguous relationship between facts and the images that represent them. Held on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025 will focus on the transformation of these media. By examining a wide range of works through the lens of images and words, the festival will pursue a reconsideration of documents and documentary.

In the exhibition gallery on the 3rd floor, what lies in between documents and documentaries will be explored through new works by the finalists of the second edition of the Commission Project by focusing on differences in the artists’ personal, social, and historical backgrounds as well as in their approaches to the issue itself. The exhibition in the 2nd floor exhibition gallery will feature a group of works related to performance and the body in forms including moving images, photography, and documents, focusing on the recording of time while also delving into topics such as cultural diversity and archives. In the exhibition gallery on the basement floor, issues of words and images will be surveyed through diverse forms of expression from the nineteenth century to the present, including works from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government collection.
Off-site exhibitions held outside the museum will provide visitors with opportunities to experience works closely related to the theme. In addition, a program of screenings, performances, concerts, talk sessions, discussions, and workshops will be presented throughout the event period mainly in the 1st floor hall, enabling artists and visitors to reflect on the theme together.

Event Overview

Title

TOP 30th Anniversary
Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025
Docs: Images and Records

Period

Friday January 31 – Sunday February 16, 2025 (15 days). Closed on Mondays
*The Commission Project (3rd floor exhibition gallery) is open until Sunday March 23

Hours

10:00–20:00 (until 18:00 on the final day)
*The Commission Project (3rd floor exhibition gallery) is open 10:00–18:00 (February 18 – March 23; until 20:00 on Thursdays and Fridays only)
*Last admission is 30 minutes before closing

Venues

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Yebisu Garden Place, affiliated local facilities, etc.

Admission

Free
*Admission will be charged for some programs such as screenings.
*Kindly note that opening hours and details are subject to change. Please see this website for the latest information on exhibitions etc.

Organized by

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government / Tokyo Photographic Art Museum operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture / Nikkei Inc.

With assistance from

J-WAVE 81.3 FM

Sponsored by

Corporate Membership of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

Contact

General Inquiries

For general festival inquiries, please contact us at:

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

Staffed Tue. Wed. Sat. Sun. 10:00–18:00 / Thu. Fri. 10:00–20:00 / Closed Mondays (except when Monday falls on a holiday, in which case the museum is open and closed the following day), New Year’s holidays, and temporary closures.

Press Inquiries

For details regarding coverage of the festival
and publication inquiries (limited to members of the press/media), please contact us at:

Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025 Office

Staffed weekdays 10:00–18:00

*The images on this website and in press releases are available for promotional use. If you would like to use any of the images, please submit a press inquiry to one of the addresses listed above, including the following details: 1) Organization name 2) Publication name 3) Planned publication date 4) Title of the image(s) you would like to use (name of artist and artwork title, etc.)