The second annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival has come and gone with much success. This year I actually decided to help out by volunteering and I'm very glad I did. I managed to meet some fantastic people and still catch a few films from the diverse lineup available.
One of the wonderful things about Shinsedai is that, though you may not enjoy every film playing, there is a very very good chance there will be something there that meets your tastes. Not a genre festival by any means, it tries to bring new or hardly known quality Japanese films (often independent) to Toronto, Ontario Canada.
This year I was able to see a few films that you might find of interest. The first one I'd like to mention, and possibly my favourite, was a series of short films from Kihachiro Kawamoto called Kihachiro Kawamoto: Japan’s Master Puppeteer. Ranging from 1970 to 1990, it included The Demon, The Trip, Dojoji Temple, House of Flame, To Shoot Without Shooting and Briar-Rose, or Sleeping Beaty. These pieces of animation were absolutely breathtaking. I would watch these again in an instant. I would very much recommend that fans of stop motion animation track the work of Kawamoto down. If you do not believe me, take a look at The Demon below:
The second film, and a clear festival favourite, was Gen Takahashi's Confessions of a Dog. Don't let the runtime of this film scare you away. While it is a bit long in the tooth, Takahashi uses the time to hammer home the idea of corruption in the Japanese pollice, news and judicial system. I would only hope that this film is purely a work of fiction as any bearing on reality is a scary concept.
NN-891102 is the third film that I'd like to tell you about. Though the title of the film might be a little hard to remember, the content of it will likely stay with you well after seeing the film. Part art house/experimental film part bizarre narrative drama and part sociological look at the affects of the bombing of Nagasaki, the film seemed to manage to please multiple types of movie goers. If you don't know the story, Reiichi is a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki. He becomes so obsessed with trying to re-create the sound of the bomb exploding it jeopardizes his sanity. Please note, if you are going to watch this movie at home, the director wishes you to watch it with the volume turned up. The film is supposed to be rather loud.
The last film worth mentioning is Our Brief Eternity. Part science fiction, part love story, this is a story about lost love or love lost. It's about those who are truly meant to be together and those who aren't. Essencially there's a mysterious virus infecting people in Tokyo (and eventually the entire planet) that causes people to suddenly faint. When they wake up, they no longer remember anything about the person they felt closest to who was not directly related to them (so they wouldn't forget their kids or parents but might forget their spouse, lover, etc.). Though it might sound a little wishy washy, and in parts it is, there are quite a few interesting elements in the film that genre fans are likely to enjoy.
While I can't say the Festival was a great success, it has done conciderably better than the previous year AND very well for a festival which was only in its second year. Next year should be the breakout year that shows exactly how well this festival will do in the future. I'm very much looking forward to Shinsedai 2011... I might even volunteer again.