This Friday: See 7 Award Winning Short Films at The New York Japan CineFest

'Together: Dancing with Spinner Dolphins.' (Dolphin Dance Project)

Whether you're seeking inspiration for work in one of our filmmaking classes or just looking for a great way to kick off your weekend, Friday's New York Japan CineFest program at the Asia Society is an excellence opportunity to catch seven acclaimed short films, and maybe even meet their directors, who will also be in attendance.

One of the program's most decorated films is Justin Ambrosino's The 8th Samurai, which imagines the fate of an additional actor cut from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. The "wildly humorous" tribute even toured with Kurosawa's films for his 100th anniversary back in 2010. Equally acclaimed is Ken Ochiai's Frog in the Well, which follows a man's "meditative and transformative" trek across Japan to scatter his mother's ashes.

Kosuke Furukawa's Uguisu portrays a waitress who "comes across two mysterious customers" while working at a Brooklyn diner, which you might recognize as Williamsburg's Cafe de la Esquina (previously home to the Wythe Diner). We're also quite intrigued by Chisa Hidaka's Together: Dancing with Spinner Dolphins, in which "a human dancer and wild Spinner dolphins forge a tender relationship through the language of dance."

Rounding out the lineup are Yasu Suzuki's Radius Squared Times Heart, which snagged Best Comedic Short Film at the Manhattan Film Festival, Haruhito Naka's Into The New World, in which a woman's search for her missing boyfriend leads her into an "unexpectedly hallucinatory world," and Yoriko Murakami's Corazon en Fuego / Heart on Fire, a stop-motion animation about a lonely woman who is "visited by an unexpected guest who will change her life forever."

Sounds like there's something for everyone! Watch the New York Japan CineFest trailer below and grab your tickets for Friday's program here.

-- John Ruscher