[REPORT] The third day of “Short Shorts” in Fukuoka, despite typhoon.
Southern area of Kyushu island was struck by the “typhoon 18” this morning, and all screenings of Short Shorts were cancelled except events and screenings in the “Kawabata Shotengai” of Fukuoka, which is located in the northern are of the same island.
The Kawabata Shotengai is centered around Hakata’s oldest shopping arcade, which has been running since the mid-1950s. This 400m long street connects the Hakata-za Theater and Hakata Riverain to the north and Canal City to the
south.
In recent years, the street is booming with 12,000 visitors every weekday, and 25,000 on weekends. The arcade contains around 125 stores – everything from shops selling Buddhist altars and traditional fabrics to hamburger and noodle restaurants.
Luckily, the typhoon presence was still weak in Fukuoka, with only a bit of rain and wind, so from afternoon, events such as audition of actors and a talk event by filmmakers took place on a temporary stage which was built for the festival in the shopping arcade.
The first event was the audition for an up-coming short film which will be produced and submitted to “SSFF & ASIA 2018,” by T&E, a local production company.
The producers of the company were the members of jury, and about 10 people of all ages (from elementary schooler to young adults) participated in this audition.
The second event was a Q&A talk session with Mr. Kan Eguchi, a prominent commercial and film director from Fukuoka. He had just directed a feature film titled “Gachi Boshi,” and his colleagues (producer and cinematographer)
also joined him on stage.
After the events, two short film screenings were held simultaneously on two different locations. One screen presented a CG animation program, and the other screen presented shorts for kids.
Many people gathered to see the shorts in this friendly atmosphere of Japanese traditional “Shotengai (shopping arcade).”
According to the weather forecast, the typhoon will be out of the island of Kyushu by tonight, so hopefully we will have lots of sun during the week.
The festival in Fukuoka continues until next Saturday the 23rd, so we hope many more people will get to know about the festival and enjoy our shorts.