Monday 25 June 2007

D for Digital: Skip to the City


The Skip City International D-Cinema Festival takes place in Kawaguchi City, Japan, July 14-22...

An important regional showcase for digital works, the jury for the international feature film competition this year is presided over by HK director Mabel Cheung (Beijing Rocks, The Soong Sisters). Among the global line-up of ten features are films from Japan, China and the Philippines: respectively Kazuyuki Nozawa's Philippines-set Maria's Navel, which follows a young child and her family struggling to get by on the streets of Manila, Qiao Liang's Euro-drama My Own Private Deutchland, and Ato Bautista's thriller Blackout. Bautista's debut Awaken can currently be seen on Firecracker TV.

The fest also includes a Japanese short film competition, and a section entitled Camera Crayon, showing 29 youth short films from the UK, US, Denmark, Korea and Japan.

Proceedings kick off with the world premiere of Kiyoshi Sanabe's Yunagi City, Sakura County, a drama following an elderly man who travels to Hiroshima to retrace the story of his sister, who died of radiation illness after the war.

There's also the chance to see traditional Japanese Kabuki theatre captured on camera in Cinema Kabuki.

More info on all this, plus trailers of the competition titles, can be found at the website here

See the SCIDCF trailer here