| 6 - Sixth Annual Toronto Japanese Short Film Festival 2008 |
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| 1. MOMO (PEACH) PROGRAM 2008 - FEATURING HIROYUKI NAKANO |
| - -Tues.Oct 7, 7:00pm/Fri. Oct 10, 8:45pm |
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Ironing for this man is not a household chore but a craft and an obsession. The lessons of his profession can be learned by watching his profound dedication to his task. |
Director: Hiroyuki Nakano - Japan - 2005
Fiction - 15min - North American premiere
Screenings: Cannes Film Festival, International Critics Week - OFAJ Young Critic Award (2006 / France), Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (2006 / Japan) |
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The beach carries a legend. If you make a wish while running as fast as you can northwards along the shore, your dream will come true. |
Director: Hiroyuki Nakano - Japan - 2006
Fiction - 12min
Screenings: Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (2006 / Japan) |
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He is a man who has abandoned himself to despair. Lost in his unhappiness, he can no longer relate to his family or his old colleagues. In a final search for a place to die, he comes upon a Ferris wheel. There, something compels him to take one last ride. |
Director: Hiroyuki Nakano - Japan - 2008
Fiction - 13min
Screenings: |
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The man has just completed an eight year prison sentence for dispatching an enemy of his father, who had been the boss of a Japanese yakuza family. He heads towards the sea with memories of his father and flowers in his hand. Past and present, hope and despair dance in his mind like the waves of the sea. |
Director: Hiroyuki Nakano - Japan - 2008
Fiction - 25min
Screenings: World premiere |
| 2. ICHIGO (STRAWBERRY) PROGRAM 2008 |
| - Wed. Oct 8, 7:00pm/Thur. Oct 9, 8:45pm |
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How much do you know about origami? Discover the true secret of the art amidst these masters' fantastic pieces. |
Director: NAMIKIBASHI - Japan - 2006
Fiction - 6min
Screenings: resfest Audience Choice Award (2006 / Japan) |
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To save the master and his daughter, a faithful sexy maid fights back against zombies. Her weapon is a big chainsaw. One of the most brutal clay-animations you've ever seen! |
Director: Takena Nagao - Japan - 2007
Animation - 7min
Screenings: Hiroshima Visual Exhibition Film Triathlon (2008 / Japan), Image Forum Festival Young Perspective (2008 / Japan) |
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Japanese service-with-a-smile is famous throughout the world. Here, a Chinese overseas student in Japan recorded her own experience of Japan's smiling service, gaining new perspectives on the phenomenon. |
Director: Lin Yirong - Japan - 2007
Documentary - 7min
Screenings: The 29th Tokyo Video Festival - Excellence Award & People's Choice Award (2007 / Japan) |
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A taxidermist looks out the window of his studio. Sequestered from the world, he protects his loneliness. His only interest in the outside is expressed through his window. But the arrival of two foreigners may prove unsettling to his isolation. |
Director: Tetsuji Kurashige - Japan - 2008
Animation - 14min
Screenings: Imageforum Festival 2008 (2008 / Japan) |
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Housewife Yoko, troubled by her husband's affair, plants flower seeds in her garden to get rid of her loneliness. When the flowers bloom, she discovers they offer a new kind of pleasure. |
Director: Chieko Sakai - Japan - 2007
Fiction - 8min
Screenings: Chofu Short Film Festival (2008 / Japan), Shortpiece! Sendai Short Film Festival (2008 / Japan) |
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The river stinks, the people stink. Chiharu beats meat at a butcher shop. The only thing keeping her going seems to be a relationship with her violent boyfriend. But hidden in all the meat-beating is a secret desire waiting to be unlocked. |
Director: Tsuki Inoue - Japan - 2007
Fiction - 21min
Screenings: Yubari Fantastic International Film Festival 2008 - Grand prix (2008 / Japan), Sapporo International Short Film Festival (2008 / Japan) |
| 3. MIKAN (ORANGE) PROGRAM 2008 |
| - Thur. Oct 9, 7:00pm/Fri. Oct 10, 10:30pm |
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Let's take a ride on a fanciful animal and you can ask me where the wind is born. |
Director: Mitsuo Toyama - Japan - 2005
Animation - 3min
Screenings: NHK BS "Digital Stadium Awards" - Video Section Grand Prize (2005 / Japan), Image Forum Festival 2006 - Honourable Mention (2006 / Japan) |
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On a bright sunny and very humid day in summer, a couple is having a meeting for an arranged marriage. There is something very unsettling about this match. |
Director: Wataru Furuta - Japan - 2005
Fiction - 10min
Screenings: Sapporo International Short Film Festival (2006 / Japan) |
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Mont-Blanc is a popular cake in Japan, with chestnut cream that looks like the top of Mont Blanc. This is a serious drama about a high school student and his beloved Mont Blanc cake. |
Director: Lisa Abe - Japan - 2006
Fiction - 10min
Screenings: One-coin Movie Festa - People's Choice Award (2006 / Japan), Shortpiece! Sendai Short Film Festival(2007 / Japan) |
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An eight-month pregnant woman, carrying a large bag heavily on her shoulder, climbs cautiously up the steep stairs. She has come to Nagasaki to answer some important questions about life and soup. |
Director: Jun Fujisaki - Japan - 2007
Fiction - 17min
Screenings: |
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Stop typing your boring New Years greeting on the keyboard to your sweetheart. Grab a pen or a brush and express your true self in Nengajo! Thats the way to get close to her in the New Year. |
Director: Secky Chang - Japan - 2006
Fiction - 12min
Screenings: West-Tokyo Film Festival - Grand prix (2006 / Japan), C's NEXT (Shochiku Film Festival) - Best Actor Award (2006 / Japan) |
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All that remains of a forbidden love, lost in the atomic ashes of Hiroshima, is a wish. |
Director: Junya Sakino - Japan/USA - 2006
Fiction - 14min
Screenings: Short Shorts Film Festival - Audience Award, International Student Film Festival Hollywood - Best Period Drama |
| 4. RINGO (APPLE) PROGRAM 2008 - FEATURING OPENART |
| - Wed. Oct 8, 8:45pm/Fri. Oct 10, 7:00pm |
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A chain of dizzying images illustrates a day in an imaginary town as seen through the eyes of a boy. Time, space and human interactions whirl around in a single shot in order to depict the world as a united whole. |
Director: Ryu Kato - Japan - 2007
Animation - 3min
Screenings: Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films (2008 / Croatia), Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival (2008 / France) |
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Shigeo believes that he is handsome and spends his life lazing around at home. His mum believes the same thing but she is starting to realize that it was a mistake to spoil him just because he is handsome. |
Director: Takashi Taniguchi - Japan
Animation - 4min
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A delivery man on his motorbike. His load: a pile of boxes full of eggs. Meticulously preparing his trip and taking all the safety precautions necessary, the masked rider cannot escape the danger lurking within Japan's peaceful countryside |
Director: Isamu Hirabayashi - Japan - 2003
Fiction - 9min
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Somehow I stare at my fingerprint. This is the invitation to the drying sun, the buildings which have soul, and the universe full of mysteries. |
Director: Hiroshi Matsumoto - Japan - 2007
Animation - 2min
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A tired woman lights a cigarette on a park bench. Smoke rises and turns to clouds. When the rain starts to fall, it brings with it sadness from the past. |
Director: HOPPE - Japan - 2006
Animation - 6min
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A man will be granted his wish by a magician if he will become the shadow of 7 different lives. However, if the shadows owner ever becomes aware of him, the man will die. And so he becomes the shadow of a frog, a carrot, a pine tree, a deer, a cat, a praying mantis. But new feelings are awoken as he takes on his 7th and final life. |
Director: Takuya Fukui - Japan - 2008
Fiction - 10min
Screenings: Himeji International Short Film Festival (2008 / Japan) |
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Pecoraped imagined ten dimensions. This film explores the sixth dimension. For example, a little red character dashes from one book to another. |
Director: Pecoraped - Japan - 2007
Animation - 6min
Screenings: Annecy International Animated Film Festival (2008 / France), Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films (2008 / Croatia) |
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A schoolgirl has two worries. One is that she is not good at drawing. The other is about her sick sister, a bedridden dandelion... |
Director: Yusuke Sakamoto - Japan
Animation - 21min
Screenings: Hida International Animation Festival of Folktales and Fables - Encouragement Award (2007 / Japan), Sapporo International Short Film Festival (2007 / Japan) |
| 5. ZAKURO (POMEGRANATE) PROGRAM 2008 - FEATURING THE IMMORAL FILM FESTIVAL / NIPPON CONNECTION |
| - Wed. Oct 8, 10:30pm/Thur. Oct 9, 10:30pm |
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Pink Film director Yumi Yoshiyuki presents an obsessive homage to a 1970s pop star. |
Director: Yumi Yoshiyuki - Japan - 2007
Animation - 8min
Screenings: Yumi Yoshiyuki |
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The day after too much drink and uneasy one night stands, a group of slackers wanders aimlessly through the streets... |
Director: Koji Maeda - Japan - 2007
Fiction - 19min
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Sato secretly yearns for a girl he knows from the red-light district. Director Imaoka tries to arrange a date and goes along with a camera. |
Director: Shinji Imaoka - Japan - 2007
Fiction - 23min
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In 2007 Super 8 film production in Japan was halted. This provokes Murakami to a fascinating meditation on the magical aura of film and its possible effects on love and life. |
Director: Kenji Murakami - Japan - 2007
Fiction - 29min
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| | TO SCHEDULE | |
