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Letter from the ASIFA President
( a text for CARTOONS vol.3 -2 )


Dear Friends,

ASIFA is an international association which aims to promote the exchanging and understanding of cultural differences, as well as to pursue lasting world peace through the development of animation art culture.

Although it is easy to say "to understand cultural differences", there in fact exists very important differences between various countries, that even the way we use common sense is sometimes completely turned the other way around. Under such situations, I believe it is most essential for us to respect and to forgive each other in order to attain mutual understanding.

Since ASIFA has been developed under the leadership of European and North American countries, and because I am Japanese, perhaps many of you may find it difficult to understand my way of thinking and administration. However, I am glad that we all have the same future goal, so I think only our methodology to reach the goal is a little bit different.

As a filmmaker, I established the Hiroshima Festival, and I have been serving as the festival director since its first edition in 1985. From my experience, as well as learning from our history, I am confident to say that animation art is one of the most effective media to understand different cultures, beyond language communication --- because, animation art consists of each and every artistic philosophy created by human beings. It is a profound happiness for us to discover and understand new things through animation art, and it is also a happiness of philosophizing to solve various questions through such art.

Today, I am pleased to recognize that various fields require animation professionals --- including filmmakers, producers, distributors, scholars, teachers, journalists, etc. I truly hope that ASIFA Members will exchange with each other frankly for good communication and cooperation to continuously develop our great art form.


Thank you,

Sayoko Kinoshita
President of ASIFA



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