Japanese Embassy Hosts Film Festival
Cavin Kanoko | Monday November 18, 2019 10:52
The Japanese embassy in Botswana in conjunction with the Japan Foundation hosted the 11th annual Japan Film festival opening ceremony on Friday evening.
The event was preceded by a movie screening at the Riverwalk New Capitol Cinema.
“The Japan film festival has been one of our key annual cultural events in Botswana and thanks to all your support it has continued for over ten years,” said the Japanese ambassador to Botswana Kozo Takeda speaking at the opening ceremony.
He pointed out that some of the movies that were being showcased were award -winning movies and he also expressed his gratitude to the Cinema management for allowing them to host the film festival in their premises.
The festival showcased four films for three consecutive days over the weekend from Friday through to Sunday and it started off with movie titled “Psychic Kusuo” a movie about a high school student who has psychic powers but wants to live a normal life.
The films that were being showcased are based on popular Japanese comics commonly known as ‘Manga’ of which the ambassador gave a bit of narration about in his opening speech.”
The second secretary at the Japan Embassy Hiroko Kitamura says the intention of the festival is to share Japanese culture with Batswana through entertainment as they also have other culture exchange programs and activities.
She says they want to increase their reach to Batswana as the intention is to have a bigger audience at the festival and also at the events organised by the embassy.
Kitamura continued to point out that with the growth of the audience they have been getting a lot of feedback on their work and how they can improve the experience at the festival.
She says in the future they plan to cater more for the audience as they have realised that there is a lot of demand for Japanese films and Animations in the country.