Q. How many types of Jury are there in the CON-CAN Movie Festival?
A. There are 3 types of Jury:
1. CON-CAN Review Committee
2. CON-CAN Preliminary Jury
3. CON-CAN International Jury
Q. What roles do the CON-CAN Review Committee play and who are the members?
A. The CON-CAN Review Committee is comprised of the internal staff of CON-CAN who screens the first round of all the contents that get submitted to us from around the globe. In the screening process the committee members look for personal expression, originality, creativity, social values, and most importantly the concept & theme. In addition to these criterias, the short movie has to be defined as an original movie that has a running time of NO more than 30 minutes including all credits.
Q. What roles do the CON-CAN Preliminary Jury play and who are the members?
A. The CON-CAN Preliminary Jury is composed of representatives from the 8 movie associations in Japan and well known film critics (we are still in the planning phase and are working on actual availability). The eight movie associations are the Japan Directors Guild, Japanese Society of Cinematographers, Japan Society of Editors, Japanese Society of Script Supervisors, Japanese Society of Lighting Directors, Japan Sound Association, Writers Guild of Japan, and Association of Production Designers in Japan. In addition to this, we also include film critics and other film experts. This team will nominate 20 movies from the pool of 80.
Q. What roles do the CON-CAN International Jury play and who are the members?
A. This is the last phase of the selection. The CON-CAN International jury is comprised of 5 globally-acclaimed film professionals that will evaluate the best 20 movies selected by the CON-CAN Preliminary Jury and choose the top 3 movies. The finalization of some of the jury members is still being waited upon, but at this time we have we have confirmed a “Yes” from the following people: Japanese Society of Cinematographers Director “Kitaro Kanematsu”, University of Southern California Associate Dean “Michael Renov” Ph.D, Tampere Film Festival - Festival Director “Jukka-Pekka Laakso”, and Beijing Film Academy Dean “Huijun Zhang”. The following jury members will discuss to determine one CON-CAN Grand Prix [cash prize US$10,000] and two Tamashii (Soul) Awards [cash prize US$2,000 each]. The winners of these three awards will be invited to Tokyo for the CON-CAN Award Ceremony in November 2008.