One of Asia’s largest brief movie festivals will have fun its twenty fifth anniversary subsequent month in Tokyo, with this yr’s theme exploring various tales throughout the context of a world rising from the coronavirus pandemic.
Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia will showcase 270 works by seasoned worldwide filmmakers and newcomers throughout 20 packages, with some productions already out there for on-line viewing and others to be screened in theaters across the capital from subsequent month.
The worldwide program will function movies reminiscent of veteran British director Sally Potter’s drama “Look at Me,” starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem and American comic Chris Rock.
Meanwhile, this yr’s pageant theme, “Unlock,” will showcase a collection of movies depicting life after COVID-19 in its “Unlock — Jumping into a New World Program,” as seen in a documentary created by 4 younger feminine filmmakers from Japan and South Korea addressing gender inequality and social pressures of their respective international locations.
Also featured is a piece by Ukrainian director Natalka Vorozhbit referred to as “Are You Ok?” that tells the story of a younger mom and her daughter who flee Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.
The movies had been chosen from 5,122 submissions in 120 completely different international locations and areas. Accredited by the Academy Awards, the pageant has typically acted as a springboard for administrators to attain worldwide recognition.
Technology is one other theme of the pageant, which takes place in hybrid type with each on-line and in-person screenings, whereas audiences can vote for movies to win awards utilizing NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
Tech can be seen within the featured movie “Hysteresis,” an animated brief by German director Robert Seidel included within the “Unlock” program, that explores the affect of synthetic intelligence on artwork.
This yr will moreover mark the primary time in three years that abroad filmmakers will go to Japan for the occasion following the pandemic outbreak.
“I hope this festival can be a reunion for everyone who has supported us from our opening year,” mentioned Japanese actor Tetsuya Bessho, who based the pageant in 1999.
Among the filmmaking heavyweights and star-studded casts, “Teleporting” is a documentary featured in this system by 4 younger administrators. Nana Noka and Chifumi Tanzawa are each 24 and from Japan, whereas Nam Arum and Kwon Ohyeon, each 27, hail from South Korea.
Having met on-line throughout the pandemic, the 4 couldn’t meet in individual resulting from journey restrictions, however they found they’d comparable experiences as ladies rising up and now establish as feminists.
For the movie, they used augmented reality-generated avatars to “teleport” themselves into one another’s mobile phone cameras and seem as if they had been in one another’s international locations.
In an interview with Kyodo News, the 4 defined that they determined to make use of the avatars to cowl their faces and assumed pseudonyms to guard their identities.
One level the filmmakers needed to drive dwelling was the phenomenon of non-consensual images of ladies in each their international locations.
Noka, who goes by Mia within the movie, relates how she turned petrified of importing pictures of her face to social media after she found in highschool that one among her male classmates was saving all her footage to his iPad to share with different boys.
Nam, who has assumed the identify, Kitty, equally tells of how a person used a spy digital camera to take pictures of ladies at her college and that many ladies in South Korea have discovered to plug holes in public loos with bathroom paper for worry of hidden cameras.
The ladies discuss a bunch of ladies’s points, in addition to unfavorable perceptions of feminism in each international locations.
“The bad image of feminism has taken on a life of its own,” Tanzawa, who performs Emma, mentioned. Like her fellow group members, Tanzawa is worked up for the movie to display for the primary time in Japan but in addition feels nervousness as she has been a sufferer of on-line harassment for her views.
Kwon, who performs Tommy, mentioned, “in Korean society, there are so many conservative views of gender, asking girls to be calm, pretty, and sit quietly.”
“This kind of representation needs to change,” she mentioned.
Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia will display at a number of cinemas in Tokyo from June 6-26. Some movies are already out there to observe on-line till July 9.
© KYODO