Ten Myanmar amateur directors will compete in Japan-Mekong film competition to be held in Ibusuki and Kagosheema in Japan in the first week of December under the cultural exchange program of Myanmar and Japan, a local weekly reported Friday.

The first Experimental Media Art Festival in Taiwan (EXIT) will open in Taipei on Thursday featuring a wide range of avant-garde films from Asia and Canada that are rarely exhibited in museum galleries or screened in local film festivals.

Just after artillery fire at the divided Korean Peninsula border struck a hard blow to international relations, filmmakers from Beijing presented a gift celebrating soft power to North Korean leader and cinephile Kim Jong-Il.

In 1941, celebrated animator Walt Disney went on a diplomatic mission to Latin America. The creator of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck became a good will ambassador. The U.S. had not yet joined its allies in war, but feared growing Nazi and Fascist influence in the Americas.

Launching the Showcase at Parliament this evening, Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Christopher Finlayson says the creation of the Film Showcase will enable overseas posts to share our films with an international audience.

For the first time in years, filmmakers in America and around the world are daring to make films criticizing communism. This heartening trend began with 2008’s blockbuster hit “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull,” produced by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg, in which Indiana Jones fights Soviet communist agents who are trying to capture an alien crystal skull in order to brainwash the West.

The film was inspiring and profound, and presented the true colors of citizen diplomacy as a connecting force between people of different nations, cultural systems, and religious identities.

Kurt Blum, the general manager of Swiss Art Gate UAE, said: "I came up with this idea to set up Magic Lantern throughout the Emirates over the next three to four years." Swiss Art Gate is a non-profit group that aims to promote cultural ties between Switzerland and the UAE.