The Japanese Canadian Cultural Center (JCCC) was proud to present the fifth annual Toronto Japanese Film Festival in June 2016.
Executive director James Heron has been with JCCC for almost sixteen years. Five years ago, James Heron founded the Toronto Japanese Film Festival (TJFF). “It’s a JCCC event,” James Heron clarified when the TJFF was first mentioned.
According to Mr. Heron, the TJFF was first created to help introduce Japanese culture to Canadians. “What better way than film,” James Heron stated when asked why pick a film festival to achieve this mandate. “Film is easy to enjoy and because it’s subtitled, it breaks down language barriers,” James explained before mentioning how every generation (like Japanese-Canadians and Japanese immigrants) could enjoy the cultural film exposure.
While the TJFF has only been featured for the last five years, Mr. Heron revealed that the JCCC always showed Japanese films ever since the JCCC was created 53 years ago. “They [JCCC] had a Japanese film society back in the 1960s but there was never a festival,” James started, “Once we built Kobayashi Hall here at this center ten years ago, we started to show just a monthly movie.” Eventually the monthly movie event grew more people in which birthed the idea of a festival circulating as a possibility. “It’s just been a natural evolution,” James finished.
When it came to picking the films, the selection process was done differently. “Our festival isn’t just about film art but of a cultural introduction. We choose films across all genres. The idea is to give people a real broad look into the Japanese film industry,” James explained. B-movies, Indie films, samurai films, comedy, drama and art house films were some examples. “We get some of the films that you’ll see at a lot of the international film festivals but a lot of films are ones that don’t make it out of Japan as often,” James ended.
As to why TJFF was featured in June, it was mainly because of scheduling. The JCCC not only had a busy summer schedule lined-up but there were other film festivals (locally or internationally) that they needed to consider that featured Japanese cinema. The Toronto International Film Festival and the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival were some examples mentioned.
“TIFF has been really supportive of us,” James mentioned before sharing how TIFF reached out to the JCCC when they needed space for their media coverage. It was an unexpected opportunity for the JCCC. “The star and the director of Sweet Bean came over for TIFF and they didn’t have a place to do their media interviews. So their PR people contacted us and we said ‘we’ll provide you with the space’. So they came over and of course that movie Sweet Bean is all about Japanese dorayaki type of sweets. One of the chefs in our community made fresh dorayaki, so they got here and they ate them and they approved,” James shared with a laugh.
So what is next after TJFF?
The JCCC will be hosting its big one day Japanese summer festival on July 9th 2016. There will be lots of food, traditional Obon dancing and drumming featured throughout. “It’s really great,” James started, “the feel of a Japanese summer festival.”
Publication Note:
This was published for AsianWave Magazine.
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