The Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow sleeps off TIFF and an astounding 2009 until October 5th

by Chris MaGee

2009 thus far has been an absolutely astounding year for the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow. When the year began the Pow-Wow was still in its blogging infancy, but in the past nine months or so we've had interviews with the likes of Kazuhiro Soda, winner of the Peabody Award for his documentary "Campaign", the Criterion Collection's Marty Gross, video artist and composer Takagi Masakatsu, indie director (and one of my favorite current filmmakers) Yoshihiro Ito, "Tokyo Sonata" producer Yukie Kito, "Ain't No Tomorrow's" and "Electric Button" director Yuki Tanada, "Wings of Defeat" documentary filmmaker Risa Morimoto, up and coming filmmaker Edmund Yeo whose short film "Kingyo" was selected for this year's Venice Film Festival, and last but not least "GS Wonderland" director Ryuichi Honda and "Non-ko" director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri back to back in a roundtable discussion.

Just typing that list up makes me tired, but of course there's been more in 2009: Nippon Connection in Frankfurt, the Pow-Wow's Otaku O-tanjobi party in May, obviously the Shinsedai Cinema Festival with Midnight Eye's Jasper Sharp and now just finishing up our Toronto International Film Festival coverage. Add to that our day jobs and contributing writer Matthew Hardstaff making his first feature film (it's true!), the addition of film/ book reviewer Eric Evans to the team, and basically we're exhausted. So for the next two weeks the J-Film Pow-Wow blog will be going on a well deserved break. Frankly my own energy level has been so low after all that that I know I haven't been giving 100% to our daily updates, and that's just no good. So check back with us on Monday, October 5th when we'll be getting back to normal around here... and we may even have some updates and surprises for you too.

Off to nap... just like our salaryman friend above who comes courtesy of dannychoo.com.