2012 Shinsedai Cinema Festival Wrap-Up

It was a very busy year leading up to the 2012 Shinsedai Cinema Festival and an equally busy couple of weeks of follow-up work, but we are very happy to have brought another fun and successful film festival to Toronto this summer! Not only did we welcome nearly 1,000 enthusiastic moviegoers to partake in the very best of today's independent Japanese film, but we also thoroughly enjoyed bringing these films to our new venue, The Revue Cinema in Toronto Roncesvalles Village.

We'd like to specially mention that our classic film screening of Kiyohiko Ushihara's 1938 horror film Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen raised a total of $574 for our chosen Tohoku relief charity, The Niji-Iro 'Rainbow' Cinema Support Project.

All of us at the festival were happy to see packed houses for our presentations of Sakichi Sato's zany comedy Zero Man vs. the Half Virgin and our Battle Girls and Bondage: A Pink Film Double Bill. It was with great pride that we also introduced Toronto film audiences to such promising new filmmakers as Daisuke Miyazaki, Sho Miyake, and Masafumi Yamada. Sharing their bold and adventurous cinematic visions are exactly what the Shinsedai Cinema Festival is about. More than a few of our festival pass holders told us again and again how special it was to see these rare and amazing films make their way to the city.

We'd like to thank all our guests who traveled to Toronto from Japan -- Yu Irie, Sakichi Sato, Daisuke Miyazaki, Kotaro Terauchi, Megumi Fuchibe and Satoshi Yajimachi. Special thanks goes to Hiroshima survivor, social worker and human rights activist Setsuko Thurlow for being our very special guest at our screening of Shinpei Takeda's documentary Hiroshima Nagasaki Download. Thanks also goes to our presenting sponsors, The Japan Foundation, CLSA Asian-Pacific Markets, The Toronto Arts Council, The David Chu Program/ Asian Institute of the Munk School of Global Affairs/ University of Toronto, and all the friends of Shinsedai who donated to our Indiegogo online fundraising campaign. Lastly, we'd like to thank our crew and volunteer staff. This year would not have happened without your hard work, dedication and love of film.

Please make sure to check back to our website for news of screenings of great independent Japanese film throughout the coming year and for dates for the 2013 Shinsedai Cinema Festival at The Revue Cinema! 

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