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Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival has announced the programme for its very first edition which takes place at cinemas across the islands 23rd to 29th November. With nearly 40 films from all over the world, the festival will open with documentary From Okinawa with Love and close with We Are Still Here which features eight stories of indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. The festival will also host a retrospective dedicated to Hawaiian filmmaker Christopher Makoto Yogi as well as screening three classic films from Go Takamine who will receive the Mabui Special Award.
Here are the East Asian features screening in this year’s programme:
Hong Kong
- Lonely Eighteen – cinematic meta drama following two young women who enter the entertainment industry to try and escape their poverty in ’80s Hong Kong.
Indonesia
- ORPA – drama in which a young woman has to battle her way through the jungle to escape her home village and pursue her dream of education.
Japan
- From Okinawa with Love – documentary following photographer Mao Ishikawa who spent her youth working in bars catering to American GIs in Okinawa.
- Intimate Space – indie drama in which a man is drawn to the seashore beneath the bridge between Shikoku and the mainland where he discovers a moribund hostess bar.
- Okinawa Philadelphia – companion piece to From Okinawa with Love in which Mao Ishikawa travels to Philadelphia to document the life of a former Marine she met during his time in Okinawa.
- One Second Ahead, One Second Behind – Japanese remake of My Missing Valentine directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita and scripted by Kankuro Kudo following a boy who is always too early for everything and a girl who is always late.
- Your Lovely Smile – Hirobumi Watanabe stars as a version of himself but this time for Lim Kah-Wai as the pair come together in shared sensibly and frustration with the indie way of life. Review.
Malaysia
- Abang Adik – displaced brothers find themselves trapped on the margins of a prosperous city in Jin Ong’s gritty drama. Review.
Taiwan
- The Mimicry – adaptation of the short story by Kao Yi-feng directed by Chung Yu-Lin in which a green sea turtle is transformed into a human.
MABUI Special Award
- Tsuru-Henry – surreal drama from Go Takamine in which an old woman collects singing and dancing DNA samples and embarks on staging a script abandoned by a writer who fled to Taiwan in search of a woman.
- Paradise View – a listless young man finds himself spirited away in the liminal space of Okinawa on the brink of transition in Go Takamine’s lyrical drama. Review.
- Dear Photograph – experimental short.
Cinema at Sea – Okinawa Pan-Pacific International Film Festival takes place at cinemas across the islands 23rd to 29th November, 2023. The full programme can be on the official website while you can also follow Cinema at Sea on Facebook, Instagram, and X (fomerly known as Twitter).
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