The Korean Cultural Centre is continuing its season of films concerned with migration in South Korea. These titles have been programmed by students from the Film Studies Programming and Curation MA programme at the National Film and Television School.
Here’s information on the latest film as pulled from the website:
Continue reading “Korean Film Nights Continues with “The Journal of Musan” on June 01st”
Yo Ota is a film maker from Tokyo who has produced a body of work consisting of short films that mix together the realism found in landscape films with some manipulation of time and movement and spatial awareness to create genre straddling works of experimentalism that ask the audience to question the way that films display things. Subjects and locations have been as diverse as Catholicism and the pilgrimage to Lourdes Cathedral and a woman dancing in slow motion and the movement of cars and pedestrians in Paris.
He is new to me and I had to do some quick research on this site where you can view some of his films. If, however, the Anthology Film Archives in New York are holding a presentation on May 21st at 19:30. These guys are an international centre “for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.” It sounds as if Yo Ota fits right in. Here’s more information from the site itself:
Continue reading “Clouded Vision: The Films of Yo Ota on the Big Screen in New York”
The East Winds Film Festival is back after a hiatus of a couple of years (the last one was in 2014). Words about the films was released before the event but I’m a bit late in covering it. It started on May 15th and ends on May 21st and the programme consists of some of the latest award winning titles from the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea and other nations and regions. The only one I have seen all the way through is Tam Cam: The Untold Story which I reviewed for V-Cinema.
Anyway, here’s a press release from the organisers:
Continue reading “East Winds Film Festival 2017 – Catch-Up Post”
The Nippon Connection Film Festival takes place from May 23 to 28, 2017 and it will be held in Frankfurt am Main. The organisers released details of the 100+ short and feature length films that will be screened and there are many top titles that audiences can see to get a perfect snapshot of the myriad of stories and talents that the Japanese film industry is producing. There are a whole host of premieres and these will be shown in the presence of many directors and actors who will introduce and talk about their work to the audience.
There are some really great films to be seen and a couple of head-scratchers based on the quality but there should be something for everyone. On top of the films, there are also many cultural events to be had at the festival which will be detailed below along with some brief information on the venues.
What is on the programme, then? This is a quick preview but there’s a lot. I’ll break it down into sections and you can view trailers and more details for each on the films by clicking on the links:
Continue reading “Feature-Length Fiction Films at Nippon Connection Film Festival 2017”
The Nippon Connection Film Festival takes place from May 23 to 28, 2017 and it will be held in Frankfurt am Main. The organisers released details of the 100+ short and feature length films that will be screened and there are many top titles that audiences can see to get a perfect snapshot of the myriad of stories and talents that the Japanese film industry is producing. There are a whole host of premieres and these will be shown in the presence of many directors and actors who will introduce and talk about their work to the audience.
The short film selection offers audiences a chance to see what new and emerging talents on the indie scene are capable of producing when it comes to this short form style of cinema. Many of these filmmakers have seen their films travel to other festivals and it looks to be a strong selection:
Six filmmakers use the camera lens to capture different views of Tokyo in the TKY2015 Short Film Series. The folks at Nippon Connection say that this collection of films “presents a variety of perspectives on the people and lifestyles of this unique city.”
Continue reading “Short Films at the Nippon Connection Film Festival 2017”
The Japan Society in London has organised another screening in London and this one looks like it will be a moving subject.
One of the films in my list of titles covering the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (which I need to update…) finally reaches the UK after it was released in 2015. The film is a documentary all about the animals who were abandoned and the people who rescue them and it will be screened at the Phoenix Cinema on May 31st. Not only that, there will be a Q&A with the director Akane Yamada and representatives of organisations featured in the film.
Here’s more on the director from the organisers: “Akane Yamada has over 30 years experience as a film and television director. Recent productions include The Happiness of Mucchan (NHK, 2014) which tracks Mucchan, a dog abandoned in the 20 kilometer ‘red zone’ around the Fukushima nuclear reactor, and The Woman Who Sleeps with 1,000 Cats (Fuji Television, 2015) featuring Yuri Nakatani, of NPO Minashigo Dogs and Cats Rescue in Hiroshima.”
Here are the details on the film:
The Nippon Connection Film Festival takes place from May 23 to 28, 2017 and it will be held in Frankfurt am Main. The organisers released details of the 100+ short and feature length films that will be screened and there are many top titles that audiences can see to get a perfect snapshot of the myriad of stories and talents that the Japanese film industry is producing. There are a whole host of premieres and these will be shown in the presence of many directors and actors who will introduce and talk about their work to the audience.
This post deals with documentaries that will be screened at the festival. They cover a wide variety of topics from the reactor meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in Abandoned Land and the evacuees to reclaim their hometown to Raise your Arms and Twist, in which the director Atsushi Funahashi observes the everyday life of the Japanese pop idol singers of the group NMB48. The director skillfully combines social and media critique without degrading the stars or their fans. Steven Okazaki’s Mifune: The Last Samurai portrays the life and work of legendary actor Toshiro Mifune, who has written film history through his cooperation with Akira Kurosawa whilein her film 95 and 6 to Go young American filmmaker Kimi Takesue explores the history of her Japanese ancestors who emigrated to Hawaii, taking the conversations with her grandfather as a starting point.
Here’s the line-up:
Continue reading “Documentaries at the Nippon Connection Film Festival 2017”
The Japanese embassy in London regularly screens films that are hard to find in the West and they are an eclectic bunch. The latest one programmed is one from the venerable director Yoji Yamada. It’s called A Class to Remember and it’s from the 1996 and was Japan’s submission to the 69th Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film category but it was not accepted as a nominee (source: Wikipedia).
Here’s the information and here’s the link to the embassy’s page:
A Class to Remember 2: The Learning Circle 
学校ＩＩ 「Gakko II」
Running Time: 122 mins.
Release Date: October 19th , 1996
Director: Yoji Yamada
Writer: Yoji Yamada (Screenplay),
Starring: Toshiyuki Nishida, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masatoshi Nagase, Ayumi Ishida, Pinko Izumi, Takashi Sasano, Ayumi Hamasaki,
The Nippon Connection Film Festival takes place from May 23 to 28, 2017 and it will be held in Frankfurt am Main. The organisers released details of the 100+ short and feature length films that will be screened and there are many top titles that audiences can see to get a perfect snapshot of the myriad of stories and talents that the Japanese film industry is producing. There are a whole host of premieres and these will be shown in the presence of many directors and actors who will introduce and talk about their work to the audience.
This post deals with NIPPON RETRO which is a special section of Nippon Connection which presents nine films by those the directors Noboru Tanaka and Tatsumi Kumashiro. On May 26, at 15:00., the film academic Jasper Sharp, author of Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, will give a lecture on “Nikkatsu Roman Porno and Japanese Erotic Cinema” and the director Akihiko Shiota will talk about some of the titles.
The Barbican are running an exhibition about Japanese homes and domestic architecture called The Japanese House: Architecture and Life after 1945. It began on March 23rd and lasts until June 25th. As part of the exhibition there will be films screened. The third film in this exhibition is The Tale of Princess Kaguya.
Here are the details:
The Tale of Princess Kaguya 
かぐや 姫 の 物語 「Kaguya Hime no Monogatari」
Running Time: 137 mins.
Release Date: November 23rd, 2013
Director: Isao Takahata
Writer: Isao Takahata, Riko Sakaguchi (Screenplay)
Starring: Aki Asakura (Kaguya), Kengo Kora (Sutemaru), Nobuko Miyamoto (The Bamboo Cutter’s Wife), Takeo Chii (The Bamboo Cutter),
This is a beautiful film helmed by Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, writer and director of Only Yesterday, Pom Poko Grave of the Fireflies and Little Norse Prince Valiant. It is an adaptation of a famous ancient Japanese folktale originally called Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) which is about a princess named Kaguya who is discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a growing plant by a bamboo cutter and adopted. While I wouldn’t rate it as my favourite Ghibli anime, it is visually stunning and this Barbican presentation comes with the Japanese voice track.
Synopsis: When a bamboo cutter discovers a miniature girl living inside of a shining stalk of bamboo, he names her Princess and raises her as his daughter. Growing into a beautiful young woman, the Princess is torn when she struggles with the responsibility of her nobility and her desire for a simple life.
Genkinahito 