Documentary overview

About A Race Against the Time: Inside Japan's Ice Festival

Giant Pop-Up Constructions: Ice Festival | Investigate Asia Structures 15 meters high and 25 meters wide - made out of snow. For 70 years now, every winter, Sapporo, Japan, has hosted one of the largest snow festivals in the world: Sapporo Snow Festival. Each team has three weeks to create works of art the size of an apartment building from a few hundred tons of loose snow. Even a small mistake or a rise in temperature of 1°C - 2° C can cause an entire structure to collapse. Failure is not an option. Perfectionism is a national trait. There’s a lot at stake: circa two million visitors from all over the world are expected. The Japanese military traditionally build the largest and most elaborate sculpture at the festival. In over fifteen thousand man-hours, Major Ling and 80 soldiers are rebuilding the royal palace in Warsaw. They need 300 tons of snow. But there is a problem: in the event’s 70 year history, snowfall has been at its lowest this year. And this despite the fact that Sapporo is one of

A Race Against the Time: Inside Japan's Ice Festival is presented by Investigate Asia. Its listed runtime is 48 minutes. The source link and publisher attribution are provided with the embedded film.

As a society documentary, A Race Against the Time: Inside Japan's Ice Festival uses against, japan, festival as its central frame. Social documentaries work best as invitations to examine systems through lived experience. Distinguish individual testimony from wider claims, and consider which institutions, incentives and inequalities shape the choices shown.

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Documentary details and original source

Title
A Race Against the Time: Inside Japan's Ice Festival
Category
Society
Runtime
48 minutes
Language
English

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