TUJ holds Student Film Festival on April 12

Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ) will hold its annual student film festival on Friday, April 12. The festival will feature 12 movies of various themes and styles, all of which have been filmed, edited and captioned by TUJ students. The event is open to the public and is free of charge. All films will have Japanese or English subtitles.

TUJ offers a “TUJ Film Festival” course as part of the curriculum of the Communication Studies major (Intermediate Topics in Media and Telecommunication Production). Students enrolled in this course are responsible for all aspects of the festival from the collection and screening of films, translation and subtitling, to event promotion including flyer and trailer production. They are evaluated at each of these stages. Any TUJ student can submit his or her film for the festival, but most submissions come from Communication Studies majors who aspire to careers in video art or the film industry.

This year’s festival will feature 12 films ranging from 2 minutes to 20 minutes. The filmmakers’ nationalities include Japan, the U.S., Canada, Ecuador, Finland and Singapore, representing TUJ’s diverse student body. The films are made either in Japanese or English without subtitles at the time of submission, and translation and captioning are done as part of the course work. This process presents another great opportunity for cross-cultural learning.

The predecessor of the current film festival was a small show organized by student volunteers in 2003 and the event celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The festival was incorporated into the academic curriculum in 2005 and has since developed into a forum that provides valuable experience for both students and audience.

Festival Details