GKIDS presents a new anime film, that is based on an autobiographical manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto best known for Chainsaw Man: Look Back. The picture is directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama, who also curated the character designs. He adapted the 143-page one-shot web manga that was published on Shueisha’s Shōnen Jump+ and that, upon its release,…
©PKFP PARTNERS Performing Kaoru’s Funeral : When a screenwriter named Kaoru dies suddenly, she leaves behind a tangle of relations who are all pulled together for the final act in her life: performing her funeral. The chief mourner is her ex-husband, Jun. A failed actor, he drifts around Tokyo as a driver for callgirls. He…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts The title of the most “kawaii” film from this year’s Japan Cuts undoubtedly goes to director Tetsuya Chihara‘s debut feature, Ice Cream Fever. This innovative film intricately depicts the intersecting longings, affections, and obsessions of four women living in Tokyo. The project showcases Chihara’s keen artistic vision of finding beauty in…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts The centerpiece film of this year’s Japan Cuts, Shadow of Fire is the third feature in Shinya Tsukamoto’s “War” trilogy, following his previous works Fires on the Plain and Killing. Renowned for his mastery in creating intense atmospheres and exploring visceral subject matter, Tsukamoto once again draws audiences into the harrowing world…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts The Making of a Japanese : Located in one of Tokyo’s sprawling suburbs, Tsukado is one of the largest public elementary schools in Japan with nearly 1,000 students. In the nation’s unique educational system, children are tasked to run their own school in order to teach communal values and how to play…
©Courtesy of Japan Cuts Between the White Key and the Black Key :Music sweeps through 1980s Ginza, a glamorous and dangerous neighborhood where well heeled Tokyoites, artists and thugs all sway together under the power of jazz. Sosuke Ikematsu stars in this spiraling, splintering, intersecting Mobius strip of a film based on the memoirs of…
The 2024 Japan Cuts line-up features an impressive documentary on the past, present and future of sexually explicit art prints known as shunga. Director Junko Hirata has been exceptionally meticulous in bringing together the human stories that mark this Nipponic art form, along with a chronicle of the preservation of these works and public display in…
The first thought that comes to mind with the term “Blue Period” is Picasso’s body of work that spans from 1901 to 1904, which had a prevalence use of blue-green shades. But the film that is part of Japan Cuts, called Blue Period, is not about the established Spanish painter of the 20th century. The movie…
Manga publishing is a ruthlessly numbers-driven business. Success is mostly dependent on sales and reader popularity polls. Nevertheless, it attracts artistic young people, who often keenly sensitive, somewhat neurotic, and even sometimes painfully shy. Those terms certainly describe either Ayumu Fujino or her middle school rival “Kyomoto the Truant.” Several apply to them both. Somehow,…
Japan Cuts is now in its 17th edition and runs from July 10th until the 21st. The largest showcase of contemporary Japanese cinema in North America and annual highlight of New York’s cinema scene, keeps getting better. This year’s line-up includes Six Singing Women, which is the first feature film in over a decade from multi-hyphenate…
©Courtesy of Tokyo Theater Company Japan Cuts opens its 2024 edition at Japan Society with the North American Premiere and Opening Night Film Between the White Key and the Black Key, at the presence of director Masanori Tominaga. Between the White Key and the Black Key is an autobiographical essay by Hiroshi Minami, a leading Japanese jazz…
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