Notícias

Animals are as integral to society as humans are, which is why they've been depicted in a vast amount of media, often being the central focus. Some of the most culturally significant films have been animal-centric, such as Finding Nemo (2003) or the photorealistic remake of The Lion King (2019), which are two of the highest-grossing films of all time. Animal-based media gives people the opportunity to peek inside the worlds of these fascinating creatures, even if it’s only an animation.

Anime is one of the most influential and watched types of media globally. Fans are drawn to it due to its distinct animation, unconventional character designs and Japan’s culturally significant themes throughout it. Further, anime tends to be more mature and realistic than other kinds of media, even when animals are its central focus. Like animals, movies are an integral part of society, and there are more than several...

Racism has many faces, but two of its roots are definitely misconception and the fear of the unknown. Nobuyuki Miyake directs a 17-minute short that highlights just the fact.

“Siren” is screening at Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh

Beginning in frantic pace and constant flashbacks that are interspersed with what is happening in the present, “Siren” unfolds like a thriller, as we watch a Middle Eastern man, Abbas, breaking into the apartment of an elderly man, wrestling with him while carrying a knife, and eventually picking him up. The scenes looks like a murder attempt, and the images, the violin music, the siren sounds, and the tension that derives from them add to this sense. As the flashbacks show, however, this is a whole other case, involving the false assumptions of an old man, which are intensified by the language obstacle, as the two protagonists do not speak each other’s language,...

The Japan Foundation Asia Center and Tokyo International Film Festival have uploaded the first of their omnibus film series, “Asian Three-Fold Mirror 2016: Reflections.” This film is in and of itself a compilation of three shorts; industry veterans Brillante Ma Mendoza, Isao Yukisada, and Sotho Kulikar illustrate three tales interrelating Japan to the Philippines, Malaysia, and Cambodia. While their plotlines are disconnected, their political arguments are not. Loosely tied to the theme “Living Together in Asia,” the three films wrest tongue-in-cheek responses to the inherently uneasy power dynamics between wealthy Japan and poorer parts of Southeast Asia. The collection peels back long-standing issues of poverty, servitude, and cross-cultural romance, bringing forth the lingering traces of Japanese (neo)imperialism.

The first and last shorts sing their songs of heartbreak and betrayal the most. The first, Brillante Ma Mendoza’s “Shiniuma Dead Horse,” follows the bleary-eyed amputee Marcial (Lou Veloso), an undocumented...

The Juzo Itami-Nobuko Miyamoto (director-protagonist who also were husband and wife) duo has given us a number of delightful movies, including “Tampopo“, “The Funeral” and “Minbo no Onna“. “Supermarket Woman” follows in the same footsteps.

Goro Kobayashi, owner of the Honest Goro supermarket, has been seeing his shop underperforming for years, and when a shiny new one, Bargains Galore, opens nearby, his situation becomes even worse. During an “inspection” of his new contender, he stumbles upon an old classmate, Hanako, who proceeds on explaining to him the perspective of the housewife regarding how a supermarket should work. Impressed with her input, and facing the possibility of bankruptcy, he hires her as head cashier, with the additional purpose of introducing new sales techniques and policies, particularly regarding the food section. Hanako soon takes over both customer service and the procedures of food selling, discovering a number of...

“If you’re too nice to pests they increase.”

In general, Tsutomu Tamura is mostly known for his fruitful collaborations with one of the greatest icons of the Japanese New Wave, director Nagisa Oshima. Starting with “Shiiku” (1961) most of Oshima’s movies, such as “Boy” (1969) or “Death by Hanging” (1968), were based on the magnificent scripts by Tamura. The characters and their dialogues defined the right kind of mix between absurdist drama and bleakness which became a trademark for these films as well as the movement as a whole.

Interestingly, Tamura is lesser known for his only film called “The Samurai Vagabonds”, a movie which brings together some of the future stars of his collaborations with Oshima. At the same time, it is a feature that sets the tone for the particular kind of writing he provided for these later works. Now that his film is re-discovered by institutions such as Japan Society,...

I am a very organized person, who likes to work in a structured way. When it comes to analyzing movies, it is the same for me. The filmography of Yoshihige (or Kiju) Yoshida is new terrain and I like to start from the beginning. Before watching any of his films, I knew that he did quite a racket with “Eros + Massacre” (1969) and “Heroic Purgatory” (1970), both sufficiently discussed by many scholars. But before venture on these so-called classics, I prefer to begin at the roots of Yoshida’s work, which brings me to his debut film “Good for Nothing” (1960).

But first, who is Yoshihige Yoshida? Graduated from Tokyo University he joined one of the big Japanese film studios, Shochiku, in 1955. After five years as assistant director, he got the chance to direct his first movie, “Good for Nothing”. 1960, the year of its release, was a critical year for the studios. The...

Jaeff is ready to disclose the last event of our lineup, the opening night gala taking place on Friday 21 September at King’s College, Lucas Lecture Theatre (Strand Campus)!

We’re excited to open this year’s festival with an exclusive screening of Ko Nakihara’s feature debut Crazed Fruit – one of the first Japanese New Wave films and a fitting tribute to the recent passing of acting legend Masahiko Tsugawa.

This film will be paired with a short experimental piece, Your Voice Came Out Through My Throat, by award winning artist Yamashiro Chikako.

Jaeff welcomes you to join us for this exciting weekend, to discover (or rediscover) classics and innovative contemporary works that resonate with themes of youth culture and social protest in Japan.

A reminder that tickets for Saturday 22 September at the Barbican and Sunday 23 September at Close-Up are already on sale – early booking is advised.

Friday 21 September 2018 – King’s College,...

in “The Boy and the Beast,” the latest hyper-imaginative anime marvel from “Wolf Children” director Mamoru Hosoda. While Studio Ghibli maestro Hayao Miyazaki shifts his attention to CG and short-form toons, Hosoda (who’d been attached to direct “Howl’s Moving Castle” at an early stage) nobly forges ahead with the labor-intensive art of hand-drawn animation, serving up an action-packed buddy movie that strategically combines several of Japanese fans’ favorite ingredients: conflicted teens, supernatural creatures and epic battles. Although only festival auds and genre devotees will show much interest abroad, locals have flocked to see how Hosoda has supercharged elements of “Digimon” (the series where he first gained notice) to deliver his highest-grossing domestic hit to date.

Whereas “Digimon” was rightly criticized for being an opportunistic “Pokemon” rip-off, “The Boy and the Beast” impressively reconfigures popular aspects of Japanese folklore, mythology and mass entertainment into a relatively fresh narrative, one whose...