Yuichi Watanabe is a boundary-pushing filmmaker whose work transcends traditional genres, weaving together media art, social activism, journalism, and cinematic storytelling. With a background in cultural anthropology from Saitama University’s College of Liberal Arts (Class of 1986), his early academic inquiries explored the ethical complexities of the researcher-informant relationship and the artificial divide between cultural inquiry and social engagement—concepts that would later shape his approach to filmmaking.

He began his career in television as an assistant director before joining DNA, an independent video journalism collective, in 2000. There, he reported from Afghanistan before and after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and covered the Iraq War in 2003. In the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear disaster, he co-founded the ongoing citizen-led initiative What the Citizen Should Do Now Project, focused on grassroots response and civic engagement.

His work extends far beyond conventional media formats. He has pioneered innovative media art projects such as the Afghanistan-Japan High School Dialogue Project (2002), which enabled real-time satellite-based video exchanges between students long before the era of Skype or YouTube, and the Minori-High Town Project (2004), which documented the final days of a public housing complex marked for demolition by yakuza interests, streaming the countdown live online.

Driven by a belief in the power of equitable, two-way communication—not only between people but also between humans and the non-human world—his current focus lies in exploring virtual reality as a platform for radical empathy and participatory media. Through his work, he continues to challenge the passive gaze of traditional video and strives to build immersive, interactive experiences that reimagine how we connect with the world and each other.