Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo: Women Horror Directors In Focus In Japan Fest

Andrew Mack, Editor, News; Toronto, Canada (@Mack_SAnarchy)

October 15 2015, 9:00 PM

As the movement to recognize women horror director continues to grow (and women in film overall), festivals around the World are focusing some and all of their programming to women directors. The Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo's focus is solely on women horror directors and they have announced their lineup for their third annual festival.

On the home front there are some notable inclusions. For we Canadians we are allowed to be proud for Audrey Cummings and her debut feature film Berkshire County. Rising star Gigi Saul Guerrero's latest short El Gigante will also be at the festival with Kirsten Carthew's Fish Out Of Water, Ashley Fester's The Last Bastard and Patricia Chica's Serpent's Lullaby. Canadian women horror directors for the win!

And for the ScreenAnarchy family our own Izzy Lee is at it again. Her short A Favor has added Scream Queen to its growing list of festival stops this year.

(Editor's Note: I had to trust the auto-translation of the official Scream Queen site from the original Japanese for some of these names and titles. When translated our own Izzy Lee turned into George Lee and her short has become 'Ask Events' which is why I feel compelled to leave this note.)

The 3rd annual Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo :
8-day Celebration of Woman in Horror

Tokyo, Japan - from Oct. 24th at the Uplink Factory in Shibuya, The 3rd annual Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo kicks off to celebrate genre movies made by women from all around the world. The festival runs from Oct. 24th till Oct. 31st, 2015.

The first edition of Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo was held in Oct. 2013.The two-day event featured 25 genre shorts from seven different countries, all directed by women.With the success of the 1st edition, last year's festival was expanded to seven days, featuring 27 short films from 12 countries and territories.

This year, the festival opens with "Berkshire County" a feature length Canadian slasher directed by Audrey Cummings as well as 2 programming tracks of short horror films originating from such locations as UK, Denmark, Australia, Canada and the United States.

Special feature of this year's festival is that all of the films will have their Japan premie at the festival. Among the lineup is "I am Undone" directed by Rebecca Thomson which tells a story of a cosmetic therapist who suffers grotesquely from oversampling her own products. Chloe Okuno's "Slut" is a dark, coming of age thriller about a 16 year old misfit named Maddy who becomes the target of a murderous sociopath. "A Day" (world premiere) directed by Chohee Chang from South Korea who will be in attendance to present her film. "Grammy" directed by Jill Sixx Gevargizian will also have its world premiere as a special presentation on the opening night at the festival before it airs on Eli Roth's Crypt TV later this year.

Special events include a talk session with actress Asuka Kurosawa, a muse of Japanese genre film scene who had a breakthrough in "Snake of June" by hugely influential auteur-director Shinya Tsukamoto and later shocked the world wit her role as the villain's deranged wife in Sion Sono's masterpiece "Cold Fish". On the closing night, the special effects make-up workshop will be held with guest instructor Soichi Umezawa, a Japanese special effects maestro and also a film director who gave a highly acclaimed "Y Is For Youth" for ABCs of Death 2.