The Japan Foundation Asia Center Grant and Fellowship Programs

The SeaShorts Film Festival was originally founded by award-winning filmmaker Tan Chui Mui in 2017 as an event to screen Southeast Asian short films and celebrate Southeast Asia cinema, has since grown into a notable regional film event. In its 2017 to 2019 editions, it has been held in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Malacca, in Malaysia. Its most recent edition in 2020 was held entirely online.
The first edition of SeaShorts Film Festival was held on May 11-14, 2017 in Lostgens’ Contemporary Art Space, FINDARS gallery and Checkmates Creative in Kuala Lumpur. With a programme of handpicked and curated short films, as well as forums and masterclasses, it showcases Southeast Asia’s stories and emerging filmmaking talents by bringing together the arts and cultural community from the region. It is also a platform for regional exchange and learning, talent recognition, networking and collaboration.
A total of 34 programmes were showcased during the Festival, including screenings, panel talks and experimental films challenges. Besides, SeaShorts Festival 2017 also highlighted some important programmes such as S-Express 2016, SeaShorts competition, Next New Wave competition, omnibus project “Fragment” (Asian Film Archive, Singapore), experimental films challenges by Mr. Koto Yamashita (Japan), short films screening from Tama University by Mr. Ken Okobu (Japan) and panel talks of curators from Southeast Asia countries such as Yuni Hadi (Singapore), Amir Muhammad (Malaysia), Aditya Assarat (Thailand), Fransiska Prihadi (Indonesia), Thaiddhi (Myanmar), Francis Jospeh Cruz (Philippines) and Chalida Uabumrungjit (Thailand).
The Festival also showcased 130 short films, which includes 118 from all the Southeast Asia countries and 11 from Japan and 1 from Syria. For the competition category, the Festival marked a total of 265 submissions from all the Southeast Asian countries in 2017 and cumulatively, it has received more than 1,450 film submissions and seen more than 3,700 festival admissions until now.
SeaShorts Festival 2017 also serves as a film gathering amongst all the filmmakers from Southeast Asia. It has welcomed festival guests from all over Southeast Asia, with 50 invited guests (25 international guests from Southeast Asian countries and 25 from Malaysia). All the guests are the established filmmakers, curators and young filmmakers from Southeast Asian and Japan.
With the continuous support from Japan Foundation Asia Center since 2017, it aspires to continue promoting appreciation and understanding of different cultures of Southeast Asia through storytelling via the medium of short films – was officially formed, with the festival as its key annual event.

SeaShorts Official Page: https://seashorts.org/