Wednesday 15th March, during the first day of Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival one of the most awaited special programs was introduced: Short Film Festival Meets Waseda Students, edited by Tsuchida Tamaki and Morita Norimasa.
Thanks to its partnership with Venice International University (VIU), Ca’Foscari Short Film Festival not only could become a showcase for the short films produced by four young students of Waseda University, but also make the public aware of one of the most well-known Japanese University. Among the 500 members of the Register of Directors of Japan, currently about 180, therefore more than one third of directors coming from the land of the Rising Sun, have indeed attended the Waseda.
Moreover, many screenwriters have studied in this University, such as Takahashi Hiroshi, who will hold a masterclass at Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival on Friday, 17th March at 8.00 pm.
The four short films on screen have been realised during a workshop organised by Koreeda Hirokazu and Morita Norimasa. They are: Starry Night, directed by Hoshiai Mio; Every Night, directed by Miyazaki Aya; The Night of Baku, directed by Hashimoto Mami; The Last Dream, directed by Nakai Noemie and Kobayashi Carmen. Miyazaki Aya and Hoshiai Mio have thus commented on the experience of the workshop: “We haven’t only learnt how to write a real screenplay, but also how to comprehend better the relationships among the different characters. Furthermore, we also have understood the processes behind the creation of a movie and how it changes during the recoveries”.
Starry Night tells the story of a child and an abbot trying to transform the souls of dead people into stars. Nevertheless, the artificial lights of the near town, more and more powerful, and are making the lights of the real stars weaker.
Every Night faces the topic of domestic violence, experienced normally in a silent resignation, until the main character, Miko, one night is brave enough to go out of her house and meet a man who seems to offer her a new and different life than the one she is used to.
The Night of Baku tells us about the meeting between the main character, an unenthusiastic Engineering student, and a baku, a Chinese nightmare-eating mythological monster disguised as a girl during New Year’s Eve. The director explained: ‘The idea of dealing with this theme starts from the will of showing the world of dreams in a new prospective, for instance through the bond born between a master and a girl”.
Finally, The Last Dream, directed and performed by Nakai Noemie and Kobayashi Carmen, is set in a forthcoming future in which human beings have lost the ability to dream. The characters of this short movie work for a firm and sell their dreams as if they were consumer goods. However, dreaming something suitable for their firm is getting more and more difficult to some employees. According to the director, The Last Dream can be explained as a metaphor for the present difficult situation in Japan, in which being a dreamer and an artist is becoming more and more challenging.
