We are studio Gyoza and our film title is Exchange Diary. The theme is be your true self. It is about a lonely girl who cannot say no to her classmates. She begins writing her true feelings in a diary and exchanging with a mysterious person. In the end, she becomes more confident. There are many students like the main characters who cannot say no to a request so we hope those people will be brave enough to express their true feelings. **FILMS may be viewed on Youtube ("About the Conference" drop down menu) or in the Watch Parties: Thursday 8pm-9pm or Sunday 10am-12pm or 2pm-6:30pm!**

We are Studio Ailurophiles because we all love cats. Our film title is “Effort Bears Fruit”. This story is about studying for exams to enter university. We want you to remember the time when you were 3rd grade high school students and remember the importance of your effort. We wanted to make this story a comedy based on our actual experiences and memories. When we studied for exams we struggled with the desire to touch our smartphones, were shocked at the results of our practice exams, and accidentally fell asleep for two hours. Yumi is a little careless and Sakura is very serious student, but they are friends in the same high school and have the same goal. Thank you for watching our video. **FILMS may be viewed on Youtube ("About the Conference" drop down menu) or in the Watch Parties: Thursday 8pm-9pm or Sunday 10am-12pm or 2pm-6:30pm!**

Our movie is Dreamer. We wanted to show the pain and beauty of chasing dreams. The main character had a dream of becoming an artist, but she became depressed because her work wasn’t recognized by anyone. Her family didn’t encourage her, and they tried to make her give up. Because of that pain, she started using drugs. Everyone has the potential to commit misconduct such as being dependent on drugs. We also wanted to show the role of friends. There is a person who is watching you always and you should cherish them. A friend is very important, but we realized through making this film that you must be your own heroine and overcome the weakness by yourself. **FILMS may be viewed on Youtube ("About the Conference" drop down menu) or in the Watch Parties: Thursday 8pm-9pm or Sunday 10am-12pm or 2pm-6:30pm!**

Everyone has a different personality, but still we can make friends, have conflicts, and accept each other. In this film, three friends spend the morning getting to know each other, despite everything. Studio Stabilizer tried to make a comedy to express the theme. It was difficult to record sound clearly so we overdubbed the dialogue. We could not match the lips perfectly so we emphasize the difference for a funny effect. Thanks for watching Best Friends. **FILMS may be viewed on Youtube ("About the Conference" drop down menu) or in the Watch Parties: Thursday 8pm-9pm or Sunday 10am-12pm or 2pm-6:30pm!**

We are studio Popping Shower. When we considered the important things in our life, music came up first for all of us and we believe music has a special and great power to encourage and connect people. It is close to our mind. In this film, you will meet three characters, and music connects all the characters to each other. Only music can do this. We wrote the original story, script and planned everything in English, but in the end we wanted to express the feeling of the characters in Japanese with English subtitles so everyone can understand. **FILMS may be viewed on Youtube ("About the Conference" drop down menu) or in the Watch Parties: Thursday 8pm-9pm or Sunday 10am-12pm or 2pm-6:30pm!**

Hina is a university student. She thinks the most important thing is money and she only works for money. One day, she met a girl who was searching desperately for something. She helps the girl expecting money in return, but instead finds something you cannot buy with money. We had some trouble with sound and very noisy cicadas when shooting outside, but we tried our best to fix it in editing. This was the most difficult point. Please enjoy “What’s Your Treasure” - Caramel Ribbon studio

Watermelons and Humans is an edited short (less than 3 minute-long) ethnofiction video

produced in the summer of 2015. It was scripted, directed, and co-edited by a then 17-year- old Suika (pseudonym) from Mainland China. It was collaboratively produced with a group

of other young migrant students from Mainland China and Vietnam who were then learning Japanese language at Kaede (pseudonym), a community-based nonprofit Japanese as Second Language (JSL) school located in Tokai area of Japan. I as the submitter of the video was involved first-hand throughout the preproduction, production, and postproduction. The video effectively utilizes as Suika’s preference a stop-motion animation technique of making a continuous movement of flat paper cut-out characters and objects that were physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames with variety of shots. The video was co-edited with me using Apple Final Cut Pro X based on a montaged sequence assembling such animated images of paper characters and objects, variedly shot images of characters performed by the participants, music, and voiceover. The video was extrapolated from Suika’s storyboard that focused on the importance of breaking humans’ habit of judging others, such as foreigners, based only on their appearances and looking instead into their inner sides despite shortcomings. Suika linked this theme to the parallelism between the appearances and inner sides of humans and those (bodies and fruit flesh with seeds) of watermelons. **FILMS may be viewed on Youtube ("About the Conference" drop down menu) or in the Watch Parties: Thursday 8pm-9pm or Sunday 10am-12pm or 2pm-6:30pm!**

This session will be a live synchronous watch party and discussion featuring some of the students films created by students from Nagoya City University. The teacher will introduce the course and process of planning and creating these films, and give some behind the scenes details about how they were made. The audience is encouraged to participate in the discussion, by asking questions and sharing your opinions and reviews of the films!