From "You Only Live Twice" (1967) to "Black Rain" (1989) and "Lost in Translation" (2003), directors who choose Japan as a filming location are often well-rewarded with beautiful backdrops. The local flavor that works its way into a movie can sometimes be as important as the characters or plot.

Along with celebrating short film as its own distinct form of cinema, the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia allows plenty of opportunities to let Japan shine via the lens of filmmakers from here and around the world.

Mayu Nakamura sets her film, "The Devil in the Afternoon," in a Yokohama park to emphasize "something uneasy going on under the facade of a happy, middle-class family." This "bourgeois environment" adds to the unsettling atmosphere as the characters' personal tragedies and fears are exposed.