The J-Film Pow-Wow welcomes Nicholas Vroman and David Lam to our writing team!

by Chris MaGee

One thing that we strive to do here at the J-Film Pow-Wow is to bring you the very best news and reviews coming from the world of Japanese film on a regular basis. As you can appreciate it's a lot of work, but work that myself, Bob, Marc, Matt and Eric love. Still us five only have a finite amount of energy, so that's why we posted an ad back in January for two new staff writers. We received quite a few responses (thanks to you all!), but in the end there could only be two. After much deliberation we have finally come to an agreement and we'd like to introduce our two new staff writers... Nicholas Vroman and Daniel Lam!

Nicholas been running his own film blog, A Page of Madness for about as long as we've been running the J-Film Pow-Wow, but he also has an impressive history in film programming. Nicholas started out in the 70's as an active member of the Seattle Film Society, then in the 80's he got involved in independent film programming with the Seattle Art Museum and the University of Washington, amongst other other venues. By 1988 Nicholas was programming for the Seattle International Film Festival. Before moving to Japan four years ago Nicholas worked as Communications Director for Northwest Film Forum. Now he's for a local Tokyo film publication, EL Magazine, as well as a number of other publications in Japan and the U.S.... and here in Toronto for us!

David Lam is a Toronto local and certified Asian film fanatic. He has also spent the past couple years running his own film blog, Exiled Film Reviews where he brings his own personal brand of criticism and humour to not only Japanese film, but Hong Kong and Korean film as well.

On top of these two new members of our writing team you'll be seeing more of V-Cinema's Coffin Jon chiming in on a semi-regular basis with news and views from California, plus we'll have some amazing help with translation behind the scenes from Chikako Hirao Evans. Her help will be invaluable in bringing you more interviews with film-makers in Japan. And if you're wondering, yes she's an Evans, meaning she's the wife of our very own Eric Evans.

So, our new team for 2011 has been assembled! Keep checking back to see what we have in store for you!