CON-CAN Movie Festival

CON-CAN Movie Festival (CON-CAN) is an audience-interactive online international short movie festival which aims to discover hidden creative talent from all over the world, enabling image creators and a global audience to share the underlying messages and sheer creativity expressed in profound short movie productions. Founded in 2005, the short movie festival enables users to watch short movies for free on its site. The festival's award ceremony is held annually in Tokyo, Japan.
The 2008 CON-CAN Movie Festival is currently underway and will have its award ceremony in Mid-November 2008.
History.
The idea for the CON-CAN Movie Festival was founded by Masahiro Yoshino, CEO of Media Research, Inc., a Japanese company that specializes in IT consulting, translation, publishing and media arts. Media Research, Inc. launched CON-CAN Movie Festival online in 2005. The name CON-CAN was first thought of in Japanese (魂観). CON(魂) represents the soul and CAN(観) represents viewers watching with true appreciation.
The 1st CON-CAN Movie Festival was held in 2005 as an international online short movie festival with two types of awards; one, an Audience Award that is presented by viewers, and the other a Grand Prix award (the best short movie) and two Tamashii awards (special jury awards) decided by the CON-CAN International Jury. A total of 151 short movies from 25 different countries were submitted. Since then, CON-CAN has expanded to receive over 550 submissions from over 50 different countries in 2008.
Selection process.
Once the submission deadline passes, the process of selecting the movies for the movie festival begins. The programming department at CON-CAN is responsible for a preliminary screening of the movies. The best 80 movies out of all the submitted movies are selected to be part of the movie festival and their directors are notified via email.
The movie festival then branches off into two parts. One part consists of the 80 movies being passed through a first round evaluation and judged by a domestic (Japanese) jury. These preliminary jury members select the best 20 movies to be considered for the final evaluation process. In the final evaluation round, international jury members selected by the CON-CAN staff select the top three nominations to be awarded the Grand Prix award (the best short movie) and the two Tamashii awards (special jury awards). The winner of the Grand Prix award and the two Tamashii award winners are invited to Tokyo with travel and accommodations paid for in order to attend the award ceremony. The award ceremony hosts famous people from the movie industry and notable news networks.
Another part consists of the 80 movies being categorized into four groups. Each group is independently displayed on CON-CAN's website. During this time, registered voters are able to watch free movies and animations, rate the movies and comment on them. The movie with the highest rating in each category is awarded an Audience Award.
Jury.
The international jury which chooses the three best movies during the final evaluation round features famous people from the movie industry. Below are the juries from previous years.