SHORT SHORTS FILM FESTIVAL & ASIA 2020
Big Screens in Tokyo; Smaller Screens Across Japan
Venue(s): Akasaka Intercity Conference Center (AIR), iTSCOM STUDIO & HALL, Space O Omotesando, TORQUE SPICE & HERB,TABLE & COURT, and OnlineSept. 16 (Wed) to Sept. 27 (Sun), 2020
Language: Multilanguages, all with English subs
Official website: bit.ly/3iLFpwg
Theater website: bit.ly/3gZp1YA
Tariff: Free both online and off
Advance tickets: Visit ticket booking site: https://bit.ly/30tDfZR
Talk event: Many — visit the official site for details.
Title: ショートショート フィルムフェスティバル & アジア 2020 (SHORT SHORTS FILM FESTIVAL & ASIA 2020)
This year’s 22nd edition of the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia returns in expanded form, with viewing now available throughout Japan via online screenings. SSFFA already went hybrid for its 2019 festival, when selected titles were streamed long before it was deemed necessary to do so. This year’s festival dates were pushed back 3 months in order to accommodate physical, as well as online, options amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Over 150 shorts films from 112 countries and regions are available to view from the comfort of your own home; but an expanded lineup of 200+ works is also being physically screened. If you’ve been longing for a big-screen experience and haven’t yet braved a theater, here’s your chance to ease back into cinema-going.
Tetsuya Bessho, President of SSFFA, and Yuriko Koike, Governor of Tokyo
Running for a shorter period (September 16 – 27), SSFFA still boasts a tremendous number of films — all showing for free — and four real-world Tokyo venues to experience the physical screenings in, including the festival’s Omotesando home and a new outdoors venue, at the Shibuya Stream Torque Spice & Herb, Table & Court (running on September 18- 20, 25 and 26).
If you prefer to watch online, you get the added bonus of watching live streaming of the opening and award ceremonies, Q&As with filmmakers around the world, and a variety of seminars and other programs. A free account registration is all that’s required to watch the lineup.
The festival continues to showcase an array of titles from Oscar-winning filmmakers and sections with award-winning work from other festivals. But it’s the Official Competitions — the International, Asia International, Japan and Non-Fiction sections — that are the real draw. The winners of each section’s Best Short Award gains automatic qualification for Academy Awards® consideration, as well as a shot at the SSFFA Grand Prix, the George Lucas Award.
English-subtitled Japanese films are sprinkled throughout the Official Competitions, but can also be found in the other competition sections: CG Animation, Cinematic Tokyo, U-25 (highlighting under-25 directors), Branded Shorts, Musical Shorts and Book Shorts. The embarrassment of awards riches also extends to other themed prizes.
This is Tokyo
Ben Suzuki /0:16:15/Japan/Drama/2020
One of those is the Cinematic Tokyo Competition, which this year drew 236 submissions from around the world. The already-announced winner is Ben Suzuki, for This Is Tokyo, which stars Win Morisaki (Ready Player One) and Singaporean actress Jeanette Aw. She is the president of a Singaporean company and he is the employee of a Japanese company seeking a tie-up with her firm. Kento (Morisaki) is tasked with ushering President Kwang around Tokyo on several postcard-perfect days. No surprise that his commitment to the job, and his giddy practice session with a youth rugby team, help the president make her decision about the business venture.
Here are a few other recommendations from the extensive lineup:
Incarnation
Noboru Suzuki/0:13:18/Japan/Fantasy/2020
Oozing with atmosphere and spiritedly acted by one of our favorites, Shinsuke Kato (Ken and Kazu, Samurai Marathon) and veteran stage actress Mayumi Amano, Noboru Suzuki’s Incarnation takes place entirely in a very dark, very old coffee shop somewhere outside of town. A young con man gets more than he’s bargained for when his mark turns out to be a 466-year-old vampire who will give him the money he’s demanded only if he first drinks a cocktail mixed with her blood. But after a woman with a snake tongue appears and a metronome starts ticking madly, it really does seem as if the hounds of hell have broken loose…
Delivery Health (the escort)
Mirai Moriyama/0:20:17/Japan/Drama/2019
Actor Mirai Moriyama (Rage, Samurai Marathon) turns director (and choreographer) for his singing-dancing drama Delivery Health (the escort), which posits the question: What’s worse — using or being an escort? The answer isn’t clear cut, of course, but quite uniquely, it is arrived at through a series of interpretive dances, as well as dialogue that is often sung. Set entirely in a luxury hotel room hovering over Tokyo, it features Moriyama and Shizuka Ishibashi (The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue) in sensuous, committed performances. So perfectly in synch are they, one can’t help wondering how many times they had to rehearse their moves.
Idol
Ryushi Lindsay/0:20:12/Japan/Drama/2020
Anglo-Japanese filmmaker Ryushi Lindsay turns a dark lens on the subject of child idols and their desperate stage mothers in the fictional Idol, which almost feels a little too real for its own good. In the film, single mother Miyabi is pushed into taking a dangerous step when her daughter Kasumi — the family’s sole breadwinner — is suddenly replaced in an idol group by a more popular girl. The group’s manager, a chubby, gum-chewing jerk, couldn't care less, and neither could Miyabi’s sister, who is worried only about the noise bothering the neighbors when a frantic little girl starts screaming…
Touch
Noemie Nakai/0:05:05/Japan/drama/2019
Up-and-coming filmmaker Noémi Nakai’s 5-minute Touch was shot on 16mm, the better to highlight the beauty and danger of the natural environment and its ever-changing moods — a metaphor, it seems, for life and love. In this dialogue-free tone poem, a woman carries a chair up and down hillocks, over waterfalls and onto endless wooden piers, as she recalls — or perhaps, goes in search of — a lost lover. That the lover is foreign and also female speaks volumes.
Future is MINE - AINU MY VOICE -
Daichi Tomida/0:19:32/Japan/Non-Fiction/2020
If you’re looking for inspiration, there’s nothing quite like Daichi Tomida’s Future Is Mine — Ainu My Voice, which focuses on Rie Kawano, an Ainu woman who comes to realize, after having a baby of her own, that she wants to devote her adult life to helping make the dreams of her ancestors come true. Due to Japan’s policy of forced assimilation, Kawano struggled with her identity until college, which she attended on a scholarship created to support the indigenous people of Japan. Intent on carving out a career as a traditional singer, she journeys to Florida, where she meets with members of the Seminole Tribe of Native Americans, who have built a community that includes a school where children are taught the Creek language and culture. The visit is life-changing, and Kawano’s song about it is sure to require extra tissues.
Stand with Hong Kong
Jun Hori/0:25:00/Japan/Non-Fiction/2020
Jun Hori’s absolute must-see Stand with Hong Kong is, even at just 25 minutes, almost too much of a visceral gut-punch. The head of nonprofit news site 8bitNews, Hori was in Hong Kong covering the anti-extradition bill movement last fall, and combines his own you-are-right-there footage with that of several others to create a portrait of chaos, commitment and criminal behavior (especially on the part of “security forces,” who shoot to death on camera one unarmed protestor). Along with photographer Michiko Kiseki, he also captures the behind-the-scenes support activities, the cleanups and the ubiquitous umbrellas. “I want to convey what’s happening in Hong Kong right now,” says Kiseki, “to show that a lot of young people are fighting.”
Akasaka intercity Conference Center: AIR
iTSCOM & HALL Futakotamagawa Rise
Omotesando Space O
TORQUE SPICE & HERB, TABLE & COURT
This year’s 22nd edition of the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia returns in expanded form, with viewing now available throughout Japan via online screenings. SSFFA already went hybrid for its 2019 festival, when selected titles were streamed long before it was deemed necessary to do so. This year’s festival dates were pushed back 3 months in order to accommodate physical, as well as online, options amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Over 150 shorts films from 112 countries and regions are available to view from the comfort of your own home; but an expanded lineup of 200+ works is also being physically screened. If you’ve been longing for a big-screen experience and haven’t yet braved a theater, here’s your chance to ease back into cinema-going.
Tetsuya Bessho, President of SSFFA, and Yuriko Koike, Governor of Tokyo
Running for a shorter period (September 16 – 27), SSFFA still boasts a tremendous number of films — all showing for free — and four real-world Tokyo venues to experience the physical screenings in, including the festival’s Omotesando home and a new outdoors venue, at the Shibuya Stream Torque Spice & Herb, Table & Court (running on September 18- 20, 25 and 26).
If you prefer to watch online, you get the added bonus of watching live streaming of the opening and award ceremonies, Q&As with filmmakers around the world, and a variety of seminars and other programs. A free account registration is all that’s required to watch the lineup.
The festival continues to showcase an array of titles from Oscar-winning filmmakers and sections with award-winning work from other festivals. But it’s the Official Competitions — the International, Asia International, Japan and Non-Fiction sections — that are the real draw. The winners of each section’s Best Short Award gains automatic qualification for Academy Awards® consideration, as well as a shot at the SSFFA Grand Prix, the George Lucas Award.
English-subtitled Japanese films are sprinkled throughout the Official Competitions, but can also be found in the other competition sections: CG Animation, Cinematic Tokyo, U-25 (highlighting under-25 directors), Branded Shorts, Musical Shorts and Book Shorts. The embarrassment of awards riches also extends to other themed prizes.
This is Tokyo
Ben Suzuki /0:16:15/Japan/Drama/2020
One of those is the Cinematic Tokyo Competition, which this year drew 236 submissions from around the world. The already-announced winner is Ben Suzuki, for This Is Tokyo, which stars Win Morisaki (Ready Player One) and Singaporean actress Jeanette Aw. She is the president of a Singaporean company and he is the employee of a Japanese company seeking a tie-up with her firm. Kento (Morisaki) is tasked with ushering President Kwang around Tokyo on several postcard-perfect days. No surprise that his commitment to the job, and his giddy practice session with a youth rugby team, help the president make her decision about the business venture.
Here are a few other recommendations from the extensive lineup:
Incarnation
Noboru Suzuki/0:13:18/Japan/Fantasy/2020
Oozing with atmosphere and spiritedly acted by one of our favorites, Shinsuke Kato (Ken and Kazu, Samurai Marathon) and veteran stage actress Mayumi Amano, Noboru Suzuki’s Incarnation takes place entirely in a very dark, very old coffee shop somewhere outside of town. A young con man gets more than he’s bargained for when his mark turns out to be a 466-year-old vampire who will give him the money he’s demanded only if he first drinks a cocktail mixed with her blood. But after a woman with a snake tongue appears and a metronome starts ticking madly, it really does seem as if the hounds of hell have broken loose…
Delivery Health (the escort)
Mirai Moriyama/0:20:17/Japan/Drama/2019
Actor Mirai Moriyama (Rage, Samurai Marathon) turns director (and choreographer) for his singing-dancing drama Delivery Health (the escort), which posits the question: What’s worse — using or being an escort? The answer isn’t clear cut, of course, but quite uniquely, it is arrived at through a series of interpretive dances, as well as dialogue that is often sung. Set entirely in a luxury hotel room hovering over Tokyo, it features Moriyama and Shizuka Ishibashi (The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue) in sensuous, committed performances. So perfectly in synch are they, one can’t help wondering how many times they had to rehearse their moves.
Idol
Ryushi Lindsay/0:20:12/Japan/Drama/2020
Anglo-Japanese filmmaker Ryushi Lindsay turns a dark lens on the subject of child idols and their desperate stage mothers in the fictional Idol, which almost feels a little too real for its own good. In the film, single mother Miyabi is pushed into taking a dangerous step when her daughter Kasumi — the family’s sole breadwinner — is suddenly replaced in an idol group by a more popular girl. The group’s manager, a chubby, gum-chewing jerk, couldn't care less, and neither could Miyabi’s sister, who is worried only about the noise bothering the neighbors when a frantic little girl starts screaming…
Touch
Noemie Nakai/0:05:05/Japan/drama/2019
Up-and-coming filmmaker Noémi Nakai’s 5-minute Touch was shot on 16mm, the better to highlight the beauty and danger of the natural environment and its ever-changing moods — a metaphor, it seems, for life and love. In this dialogue-free tone poem, a woman carries a chair up and down hillocks, over waterfalls and onto endless wooden piers, as she recalls — or perhaps, goes in search of — a lost lover. That the lover is foreign and also female speaks volumes.
Future is MINE - AINU MY VOICE -
Daichi Tomida/0:19:32/Japan/Non-Fiction/2020
If you’re looking for inspiration, there’s nothing quite like Daichi Tomida’s Future Is Mine — Ainu My Voice, which focuses on Rie Kawano, an Ainu woman who comes to realize, after having a baby of her own, that she wants to devote her adult life to helping make the dreams of her ancestors come true. Due to Japan’s policy of forced assimilation, Kawano struggled with her identity until college, which she attended on a scholarship created to support the indigenous people of Japan. Intent on carving out a career as a traditional singer, she journeys to Florida, where she meets with members of the Seminole Tribe of Native Americans, who have built a community that includes a school where children are taught the Creek language and culture. The visit is life-changing, and Kawano’s song about it is sure to require extra tissues.
Stand with Hong Kong
Jun Hori/0:25:00/Japan/Non-Fiction/2020
Jun Hori’s absolute must-see Stand with Hong Kong is, even at just 25 minutes, almost too much of a visceral gut-punch. The head of nonprofit news site 8bitNews, Hori was in Hong Kong covering the anti-extradition bill movement last fall, and combines his own you-are-right-there footage with that of several others to create a portrait of chaos, commitment and criminal behavior (especially on the part of “security forces,” who shoot to death on camera one unarmed protestor). Along with photographer Michiko Kiseki, he also captures the behind-the-scenes support activities, the cleanups and the ubiquitous umbrellas. “I want to convey what’s happening in Hong Kong right now,” says Kiseki, “to show that a lot of young people are fighting.”
Akasaka intercity Conference Center: AIR
iTSCOM & HALL Futakotamagawa Rise
Omotesando Space O
TORQUE SPICE & HERB, TABLE & COURT
Please be sure to check with the theater before going.