Welcome film fans and movie adepts! The JFF+ Independent Cinema 2023 just started, and they are featuring 12 movies that are being streamed online for free. Unfortunately, not every movie is available in all regions, and none of them are available in Japan But Iām sure creative souls know how to cope with thatā¦
Anyways, here you can find the programme:
The films are available to watch online until 2023-10-31T07:59:00Z.
If youāve watched one (or more) of them, please feel free to indicate it in the poll and/or comment about it in the thread. Looking forward to sharing the love for the movies with all of you
I havenāt looked closely at the others, but I just wanted to point out Hanagatami was made by Nobuhiko Obayashi, most well known for directing House! Iād highly recommend at least looking into it; Iāve loved everything Iāve seen by this director.
According to the description it is half-documentary, half-fiction, and that is basically the feeling I had with it. There was not really a concise story to it, more like a snapshot of the lives of two Buddhist priests after the Fukushima disaster. Beautiful pictures and some deep emotions.
The language was mostly everyday language, which I found ok to follow. In some parts more difficult words were used, but overall I thought it was okay.
For me, this was not a movie to watch āin-betweenā. It is very slow, and I needed a bit of calm time afterwards to fully digest it. I think Iāll watch it once more.
I got an email newsletter from The Japan Foundation here in my country and got me introduced to this! Free movies! Yay!
I watched A Girl in My Room.
Some personal thoughts
I feel like I didnāt get much of the cityās charms from the movie but I felt the simplicity of the place as a whole. Not gonna lie, I got horror movie vibes before the ghost girl showed up the first time. Iām not fond of scary stuff so I almost closed the tab! Good thing I persisted. (Yeah, Iām a scaredy cat, I know! Iām sorry!)
The ending gave me a bittersweet feeling as similar romance stories do. Since itās open-ended, itās up to the viewer how we will view subsequent events. Not sure if the manga itās based on gives a generic ending I want (which is always welcome).
To be brutally honest, this is a generic romcom like typical romcom anime. I donāt mind at all but Iād give it a 6/10.
I will definitely watch more throughout the free viewing period.
I always forget about this festival even though Iāve seen some really good films in the past, like The Great Passage (čćē·Øć) (wiki link). I never thought a fictional movie about making a Japanese dictionary could be so good (plus I learned a lot of new interesting words).
To be clear, mind, The Great Passage was screened at the main festival. Whatās going on now is a sort of mini-festival showcasing independent films. The main JFF is still coming later this year.
Itās hard not to cringe at Harukaās stances. I relate to her as an objective-oriented person, but her being the epitome of the human version of someoneās brutally honest thoughts makes me thankful that Iām not 100% like her.
Seeing how everyone was portrayed, I didnāt feel like I was watching a movie. It felt like I was watching real people living their daily struggles.
The movie gave me family problems to think about thatās not even my own when I have my own family problems to think about on my own. 8/10.
Watched Techno Brothers! Pretty fun, its low budget was even more apparent than I expected, but they made some interesting stuff work out with what they had. I was regularly pretty impressed with some of the shots, even if parts went on a little long to fill space and it was certainly ramble-y. As Japanese comprehension practice thoughā¦ the dialog was relatively simple, but the audio quality is so bad itās hard to recommend it. Voices are regularly only barely being picked up, or competing with background noises. That really messed with my comprehension pretty frequently.
The Japanese was easier than the first two films the WaniKani film club watched, but the audio levels made it a difficult listening experience at times. I watched with English subs and couldnāt have survived without subtitles. But yeah, the dialogue is a bit sparse on top of that, so I wouldnāt really recommend it for listening practice specifically.
The film has chapter titles throughout, which for some reason the English subtitles chose not to translate, haha. We had a lot of fun trying to catch those when watching as a group. If youāve gotten decently far in WaniKani, those should be a snap to read, for the most part.
Spoiler thoughts:
My favorite part of the movie was how it framed the shots. It also used color really, really well, with the red of the Techno Brothers and their manager standing out in pretty much every single shot. The pacing was a bit slow, which I donāt really mind, though there are a lot of scenes where it was just a musical performance, which didnāt bother me personally, but that might not be everyoneās kind of thing.
Iām sort of only just now realizing that the 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes from the music choice at the beginning is sort of reflected in the overall pacing and some of the weirdness of the film as wellā¦
I guess I would have liked to see the film go a bit weirder with it, yeah. That could have been fun. I feel like the film had a lot of ideas, but not necessarily enough follow-through or commitment to make it really stand out to me.
Still had a decent time watching, but the experience was definitely improved watching as a group. I feel like the slowness of the pacing would stand out more on your own.
But Iām sure creative souls know how to cope with thatā¦
Thought they may be canceling this year, the last few were in the winter/spring IIRC.
