About Chanoma Film Festival 2006

After taking a year off in 2005, the Japanese Film Festival will be returning to L.A. this year. The “Chanoma Film Festival 2006” will be showing 11 heart-warming Japanese films at West Hollywood’s Laemle’s Sunset 5 from October 20th – 26th. A variety of top notch Japanese films will be shown such as “What the Snow Brings”, which swept 4 awards at the 18th Tokyo International Film Festival (2005) including the Grand Prix, “SHARA”, which was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, “The River of First Love”, “HINOKIO”, “SCHOOL WARS: HERO”, “NAGASAKI Angelus Bell·1945 “, and more. The films featured at the festival are presented from the view point of the Japanese family and gives the audience a chance to re-consider what a family is to us. Audiences can enjoy the films regardless of their age. Our goal is to present films that enhance cultural exchange and mutual understanding of Japanese culture to the American and Japanese people living in Los Angeles.
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The Chanoma Film Festival started in 2003-2004 with the goal of delivering better understanding of modern Japanese culture, while also providing a cultural exchange and mutual understanding for Americans and Japanese-Americans living in Los Angels -- through realistic depiction of Japanese families.

With the sincere help and support from the Japanese Consulate General, the Japan Foundation Los Angeles office, Japanese-American corporations, the neighborhood communities and the Japanese mass media in the Los Angeles area, the film festival was a huge success.

In addition to several thousand audience participants, a great number of students from local high schools and colleges who studied Japanese language and culture visited the event as a part of their field trip curriculum.
Not only the Japanese media but the LA Weekly and Korean Times picked up on our story as well.

Although the festival took a year off in 2005, the event will be held anew this year in 2006.

The movies presented at the "Chanoma Film Festival 2006" are based on the theme of "Chanoma" - a family gathering place in the living room. Each of these heart-warming pieces realistically portrays the everyday life of a Japanese family and can be enjoyed by all audiences regardless of their age.

While Japanese films have become increasingly popular overseas, as evidenced by Hayao Miyazaki's anime movie wining an Academy Award, and the remaking of Japanese horror movies by Hollywood studios, most of these movies are based on anime, horror, and action themes and fail to portray to America and other countries the true essence of Japanese culture. This film festival will serve as a perfect opportunity to allow Americans and others of Japanese descent to better understand modern Japanese culture, as well as to provide Japanese people themselves an insight into, and a chance to redefine true Japanese culture that goes beyond the anime, horror, and action genres.

Films will be accessible to both young and old alike, provided at low prices to demonstrate the fact that the festival has a major social significance and a valuable contribution to society.

We greatly appreciate your continued assistance in making this film festival a successful one.