chiba film festival

This weekend was the 5th annual Chiba Film Festival! I went to both the pre-opening party on Friday night and the opening day on Saturday, though I had other plans on Sunday so I couldn't make it then. Anyway, it didn't seem like a very large-scale event, but I felt like the festival and the people organizing it had a lot of personality, which is maybe something you can only feel at smaller events anyway!

So Friday night I headed over to the Chiba City Civic Hall (I think that's what it's English name is, anyway), which I'd actually never been to before. I really only went into the small exhibition hall and the little lounge/cafe area, but it seems like a pretty nice facility for events (which is the kind of thing I've started to notice even though I don't actually organize any events, haha).  For the pre-opening party, they showed some amateur films made by students from nearby universities and even had a mini-concert at the end, including the newly composed Chiba Film Festival theme song! I thought the student films were pretty interesting (I was especially impressed by one made by someone who said she had never even held a camera until college) and I though the theme song was super catchy. :D

Then on Saturday I went right back again for the first day! I had bought a one-day pass (which only cost 2600 yen - not bad at all considering a movie in Japan is usually around 1800 yen), so I was able to go to all the screenings, and in fact I actually did stay there the whole day and watch everything (what can I say, I love movies!). There were four screenings: 'Azemichi Jumping' directed by Fumie Nishikawa, 'Socratic Love' directed by Ryousuke Hayazaka, a collection of slightly strange/fantastic shorts directed by Masahiro Muramatsu, and 'The Dynamiter', an American film directed by Matthew Gordon. I think my favorite was 'Socratic Love', which was a a quirky story about a couple and a picture book (my summary definitely doesn't do it justice but it's hard to explain).

One of the coolest parts about the festival was that the directors were there as guests (for all but the last movie) and after each screening there was a short Q&A session - for the collection of shorts, a bunch of the actors were there, too. Everything was all in Japanese so I can't say I understood everything (this goes for the movies themselves too), but it was pretty awesome to see a work and then be able to hear from the director right after.

They also gave us seat cushions for the screenings, which I certainly appreciated after sitting there all day, and had things like handmade Chiba Film Festival coasters and bookcovers for sale! All in all I'm definitely glad I went, and I would love to go back next year, too. :D