Strong, impassioned filmmaking has been the trademark of director Mitsuo Yanagimachi since his debut, God Speed You! Black Emperor, his 1976 documentary about Tokyo's bosozoku bike gangs. In his latest production, The Wandering Peddlers (Pao Jiang Hu), released last October, Yanagimachi shifts his gaze to a different group of people on the fringe: the traveling vaudevillian salesmen of Taiwan.

In highlighting this little-known group, Yanagimachi captures the energy, simplicity and lust-for-life of a dying breed. By focusing upon one family--and the younger generation--he offers a powerful view of itinerant life which is not without nostalgia, but rarely slumps into sentimentality.

Yanagimachi's last three films have all featured protagonists from China--perhaps because, as the filmmaker says, "That's where my roots are." But whether he focuses on Japanese or non-Japanese, his interest lies with people who are destined to wander, always in some state of transition. Like the characters in his films, there is a restlessness in Yanagimachi's work that he puts down to his childhood in Ibaragi where he grew up, he says, "watching a river flow."

"I was a second son," he adds, "I always had the feeling that I had to leave home to find my own place."

Ironically, Yanagimachi's tight focus on his borderless subjects could be one factor that has kept him out of the spotlight at home. He has, however, earned recognition overseas--particularly in France--as one of Tokyo's most inspired auteurs. Despite his critical success, his audience remains relatively small. Yet he is not against entertainment-oriented films. "In the past I have sought only serious subjects," he confesses, "but I'm changing with time." The ill-fated Shadow of China, which was stricken by extreme disagreements between Yanagimachi and his more commercially-minded U.S. co-producers, was one such attempt at a shift. "If the investors allow me artistic freedom," he says, "I'm willing to try again."

We have chosen to award Yanagimachi not only for Pao Jiang Hu, but in recognition of his stubborn, uncompromising artistic vision, and the promise that this holds.