Here is the launch of another niche film festival in Toronto: The Shinsedai Film Festival. Chris MaGee, a local blogger who runs the JfilmPowWow, a site dedicated to Japanese Cinema of all stripes, types and genres, has teamed up with Midnight Eye Co-Founder Jasper Sharp to showcase Indie Japanese films for a few days in the City in August.
Often in popular culture, Japanese cinema is represented by Samurai films, Large Monsters stomping Tokyo or thoroughly outlandish horror and splatter films, it looks like The Shinsedai Festival will be looking more at human beings and intimate dramas from the islands far east.
Yuya Ishii’s surreal father/ daughter comedy Girl Sparks, Touru Hano’s moody and sexy indie horror film Thunderfish (Raigyo), a retrospective of the works of Kyoto-based video artist and composer Takagi Masakatsu are just a few of the highlights which can be found in the festivals full line up.
Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Oshima, Kitano – around the world these names immediately bring to mind the best that Japanese cinema has to offer, but now that we’re at the beginning of a new century many film fans are wondering who the next generation of great filmmakers from Japan will be. Toronto’s first Shinsedai Cinema Festival tries to answer that question by bringing some of the best work by independent Japanese filmmakers to Toronto, many for the very first time.
Shinsedai – Japanese term meaning “new generation”
Curated by Jasper Sharp, author, film historian, and co-founder of Midnight Eye (http://www.midnighteye.com/), the premiere resource for new Japanese cinema online and Chris MaGee, the founder and editor of Toronto’s own J-Film Pow-Wow (http://www.jfilmpowwow.blogspot.com/), the Shinsedai Cinema Festival will celebrate the wide range of talent coming out of Japan today. For three days between August 21st and 23rd the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre will be host to everything from insightful dramas, quirky comedies, hard-hitting documentaries, experimental shorts, and beyond. The Shinsedai Cinema Festival will have something for everyone this summer.
