Cinema festival kicks off another year of silver screen celebration in Movie Town Chofu

The city of Chofu once again closed the curtain on its Movie Town Chofu Cinema Festival kicking off another year in celebration of the city’s movie-making heritage.

Movie Town Chofu Cinema Festival 2023, which wrapped on February 19, saw the festival bring to fans of film screenings of Whisper of the Heart, the 1995 animated feature written by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. Screenings were held at the Aeon Cinema Theatus in Chofu over nine days of the festival period.  

Tickets for the screenings sold out after it was announced that Whisper of the Heart would be jointly screened with On Your Mark, the animated short written and directed by Miyazaki.

The latest edition of the festival also featured a Cine Works exhibition at Chofu City Cultural Hall Tazukuri. Items on exhibit included photographs of filming locations, art blueprints, design drawings, and idea sketches as well as props and costumes from the movie Kingdom II: Harukanaru Daichi e, released in 2022.

Items related to other movies screened during the festival were also on display including those from Shin Ultraman, In the Wake, Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai, and BL Metamorphosis.

The festival presented its centerpiece Chofu Cinema Awards for the fifth time, with event organizers once again placing the spotlight on those talents within the Japanese film industry that perform their magic behind the scenes - cinematographers, light and sound engineers, editors and more.

Movie Town Chofu Cinema Festival 2023 was held from January 27 through February 19.

The city of Chofu is home to two large film studios, Nikkatsu Chofu Studio and Kadokawa Daiei Studio, as well as around 40 film and video-related companies still in operation today.

The impetus for the city’s development into a movie-making town began with the creation of the Tamagawa Film Studio in 1933.

According to Kaichiro Honda, a former mayor of Chofu, the reason why the studios were built in the city was due to a natural environment which was suitable for filming both period and modern dramas as well as the city having the kind of good quality underground water essential for developing film.

During the heyday of Japanese cinema in the 1950s, films were being produced at three studios in Chofu - Daiei, Nikkatsu, and those of the independent production company Chofu Eiga Studio - leading to Chofu being given the moniker “the Hollywood of the East.”

Visitors to Chofu can find The Monument of Movie Actors and Monument for the Birthplace of Chofu's Film Industry located in the Tamagawa 5-chome Children’s Park, which was once the site of Kadokawa Daiei Studio.

Today, the city of Chofu hosts a number of move-related events, including the Movie Town Chofu Cinema Festival.

One such event was a guided tour aimed at deepening understanding of the city as “Movie Town Chofu.”

The tour was joined by a lecturer from a university in Tokyo who spoke to participants before they headed out to take in locations that included the monuments and movie studios (movie-star handprints included).