16th Japanese Film Fest!

スタート！

It certainly has been a long time between posts, something that will no doubt be replaced with a fast and furious barrage of writing thanks to the 16^th Japanese Film Festival, which started its Melbourne leg last Thursday. What would ordinarily mean lots of movie watching (a record 40+ films are being screened this year) will be augmented by the fact that I am volunteering, and as such, will be watching/sitting through a whole bunch of films I wouldn’t ordinarily go out of my way to see.

A festival as big as this is obviously aiming to reach the widest possible audience, so the program is focused mainly on box office successes and crowd pleasers from the past year. Unfortunately for me this means that horror movies and bizarre cult oddities have been more or less abandoned in favour of dramas, weepies and chick flicks.

What has me incredibly excited however is the Melbourne exclusive retrospective of 50s/60s director Yasuzo Masamura. Six of his films will be screening FOR FREE at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, and is going to be a great opportunity to check out some stuff that may otherwise be unavailable outside of Japan.

Opening night kicked off with a number of speeches and a pretty much sold out screening of Thermae Romae (テルマエ・ロマエ), which was actually much more enjoyable than I was expecting. Hiroshi Abe’s comedic performance had some brilliant moments in this far fetched, time travel tale of Ancient Rome/Modern Japan crossover. Throw in some hilarious use of opera, a self-aware sense of humour and the super cute Aya Ueto and you’ve got a filmic love letter to the power of the bathhouse- and a pretty spot on choice for an opening night screening.

I have my tickets booked for six or seven films, and have decided to only write about the ones I actually sit down and watch from start to finish, rather than simply sit in on as a volunteer, which will make it easier on me in that there will be less to write and will save me from voicing the many reasons why Until the Break of Dawn (ツナグ) was the biggest load of melodramatic claptrap I have seen in a long while.

So stay tuned for some thoughts and musings on a bunch of upcoming films; which at this stage are looking like they will range from comedy, drama, action, documentary and one film I’m hoping will deliver at least a little bit of some much needed horror!

And grab ticket info from http://www.japanesefilmfestival.net/