Japanese Films at the 2014 Raindance Film Festival

The Raindance Film Festival announced its line-up yesterday and it is filled with a lot of Japanese indie film gems released at the tail end of last year and throughout 2014. There 100 features and over 150 shorts and the Japanese selection makes a large part of this. Raindance remains the best place to see a lot of indie films with the likes of Yosuke Fujita and Mipo Oh getting their latest films screened and there are a lot of shorts from New Directions in Japanese Cinema, a collective of filmmakers who have been making films for a spell now and are a good indicator of what the indie scene looks like. Here’s the trailer for the festival:

The festival takes place from September 24^th to October 05^th, at the Vue Cinema at Piccadilly Circus and features a lot of titles from around the world.

I enjoyed a lot of the titles I saw last year and I’m going again because the quality of the films looks great. The programme has a number of movies and shorts that have caught my eye while writing trailer posts and, furthermore, the directors/cast/staff will be coming to the UK from Japan and so I think it best to show them some support and also hear the inside story on how their films were made, something which is always a thrill.

Third Window Films will be promoting their four of their latest films at the Raindance Film Festival, with all four titles having directors over to introduce their films and have Q&A sessions and interviews. Fuku-chan of Fukufuku Flats by Yosuke Fujita, The Lust of Angels by Nagisa Isogai, And the Mud Ship Sails Away by Hirobumi Watanabe and Buy Bling, Get One Free by Kosuke Takaya will all play.

Here are the people who are making the effort to travel across the globe to meet us:

Yosuke Fujita, director of “Fukuchan of fukufuku Flats”

Hirobumi Watanabe and his brother/producer Yuji Watanabe, and cameraman Bang Woohyun, all of whom worked on “And the Mud Ships Sails Away”

Nagisa Isogai, director  of “Lust of Angels”

Hoshi Ishida, actor in “Touching the Skin of Eeriness” (which plays back to back with “Lust of Angels”)

Kosuke Takaya, director of “Buy Bling Get One Free”

Ian Thomas Ash, director of “-1287”