June and July are shaping up to be big months in New York City for Asian film fans. First up is Subway Cinema’s annual New York Asian Film Festival (www.subwaycinema.com) from June 22 to July 8. Following that is the Japan Society’s Japan Cuts festival (www.japansociety.org) from July 5 to 15. Indeed, the two fests are slated to have some co-branded screenings from July 5 through 8.

The Japan Society’s website has just announced some of the confirmed films for Japan Cuts. The list is below. We are particularly excited that they will be screening Matsugane Potshot Affair, one of the new films by Nobuhiro Yamashita, the director of the brilliant Linda Linda Linda. (Check out Blake’s interview with Nobuhiro Yamashita here.)

Japan Society’s first-ever large-scale film festival brings a sizable slice of Japan’s dynamic contemporary film culture to New York City. Drawing on the wide range of films produced in Japan today—from blockbusters, cutting-edge independent films and animation, to documentaries and short films—JAPAN CUTS features:

# Over 15 U.S. and NY premieres of the best in feature films
# Short films from the forefront of Japan’s emerging independent film makers and video artists
# Free outdoor screening across from Japan Society for the entire family
# Introductions and Q&A’s with directors, panel discussions, and parties

Confirmed films include:

Ants (dir. Kaoru Ikeya)
Big Bang Love (Takashi Miike)
Dear Pyongyang (Yonghi Yang)
Death Note and its sequel Death Note: The Last Name (Shusuke Kaneko)*
Gamera the Brave (Ryuta Tasaki)
Faces of a Fig Tree (Kaori Momoi)
Freesia (Kazuyoshi Kumakiri)
Kamome Diner (Naoko Ogigami)*
Komaneko – The Curious Cat (Tsuneo Goda)
Matsugane Potshot Affair (Nobuhiro Yamashita)
Memories of Matsuko (Tetsuya Nakashima)
Monsieur Greenpeas (Yasuo Kurita)
The Prisoner (Masao Adachi)
Sway (Miwa Nishikawa)*

* Director in person