The Sixth Annual "Zatoichi Asian Film Festival".

[Zen Davis]

It's time for the sixth annual "Zatoichi Asian Film Festival" and you're invited!

Every summer my friends and I gather roughly 40 asian films (Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India) to watch over the span of 6 days. We're looking to have more people join us this and partake in the festivities since we've built up a 12 foot projection screen, complete with 5.1 surround sound. If you're interested, please send a PM.

The selection process is going to happen sometime over the next two weeks and we'd be more than happy if anyone wanted to join us in it. We've got a ready-made list of potential films to scour through, and depending on how many people become involved, we'll evenly split the selections among us.

The event is located in NJ and so if you're in the neighborhood sometime around June or July, let us know and we'll work something out with you.

[efterapare]

I thought this was a marathon on all the Zatoichi movies

Wish I could attend anyway.. I'm too far away

[Zen Davis]

la balena

I thought this was a marathon on all the Zatoichi movies

Wish I could attend anyway.. I'm too far away

Sorry that you can't make it. We might live stream the event - along with all the prank throwing shenanigans that typically go on at a ZAFF - so perhaps you can join us through that avenue. We watched Beat Kitano's "Zatoichi" at the very first ZAFF and have been holding the event among ourselves every summer since.

[Zen Davis]

We're located in Dover, NJ. The entire setup is organized in our basement as I live in a very large home. It's pretty nice although I may look into upgrading my furnishings a little more prior to ZAFF.

We live in a pretty well off part of town and setting this outside would result in some annoying logistical problems: bugs plaguing the projector and screen, noise keeping the neighbors awake, and the inability to watch films in the daytime.

We have room for about twelve people total. However, we'd have to discuss arrangements for food and drink and how we'd approach all that. We're also going to need to discuss film selection and whether you would like to be a part of the selection process, or if you'd rather just leave it to us. Personally I'd encourage you to get involved as it makes all this much more fun.

Every year I draw up a pool of roughly 150 Asian films that I've found to have some level of lavish praise thrust upon them. My friends and I then go through the descriptions of all these films, picking and choosing what each of us would like to watch, and then moving into the selection process.

In the selection process, we divide 40 films evenly between us. We each pick one film at a time and if a film we intend to choose is chosen by someone else, we add a backup choice to the line-up. It usually ends up being an interesting social game with people hoping that the films they want to watch are picked by someone else, so they can add even more films from their own list. I personally had difficulty getting my list down to 60 films. My friend Tony has his down to 50. Inevitably, there will be some disappointment and politicking but it all ends up being in good fun.

I haven't decided how many films we would watch per day yet. 40 films is a tough bone to chew on. We'll either split five films between eight days or six films between seven days over the course of the summer. We can talk about making arrangements based around your schedule.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I'll be happy to answer them for you.

Zen