Absence, Ambiguity, and Deviating Pleasure Activism: The Tokyo Rainbow Film Festival

Whereas several Japanese popular magazines have published reports and interviews on LGBT film festival curators, little scholarship has shed light on Japanese LGBT film festivals. This article serves as a case study of how the festival enables the festival community—cinephiles, LGBT audiences, organized groups of activists, and indie filmmakers—to share ideas and coordinate within and outside the metropolis. I conduct a synchronic and diachronic study to sketch the historical trajectory of the festivalgoers, material spaces, festival formation, curation, and programming. In utilizing a methodological framework which includes geopolitics, gender, film, and organizational studies, this article proposes an approach that juxtaposes the classic concept of ‘counterpublics’ with the theoretical reading of affective politics and pleasure activism. The findings suggest that the Tokyo Rainbow Reel Film Festival functions as a site of discursive political stances and affective disposition. The ambiguity of the film festival space correlates closely with two factors: Japanese homophobia, or ‘the absence of LGBT’, and an unorthodox pleasure activism that does not include suffering and oppression.