Japanese Film Festival

The National Film and Sound Archive is letting us know they’re kicking off the 15th Japanese Film Festival.

Opening Night (Wednesday 9 November) will again be presented FREE to the public by the Embassy of Japan. This year’s opening film will be Railways – the new heartwarming drama from the team behind the hit TV series Always: Sunset on Third Street (bookings essential – phone 02 6248 2000).

Recent Japanese box office champions are represented by the two back-to-back-shot Gantz (MA15+) films, live action state-of-the-art adaptations of the hit manga (cartoon) and anime TV series. These will screen on Friday 11 November and Saturday 12 November respectively.

Canberra’s Japanese Film Festival is the first chance for Australians to see the top draw of the 2010 Japanese box office – the new film from acclaimed anime Studio Ghibli, Arrietty (G), with a script by its master filmmaker MIYAZAKI Hayao (a favourite of Disney) that’s based on Mary Norton’s classic English children’s story The Borrowers (also the writer behind Bedknobs and Broomsticks).

This year’s festival features new films from two of the zaniest of contemporary Japanese filmmakers. There’s the Beetlejuice-like latest from GS Wonderland director HONDA Ryuichi, Honeymoon in Hell: Mr and Mrs Oki’s Fabulous Trip (u/c18+). The ever productive director of the recent art house samurai epic 13 Assassins, MIIKE Takeshi, also returns to his inspired, out-there business as usual with the cartoonish ‘children’s’ movie Ninja Kids (G) (with $5 tickets for kids under 15).

Don’t miss this chance to catch up with the latest films from some of Japan’s most respected festival and art house filmmakers. Many use classic Japanese cinema genres to explore the issues and anxieties behind this difficult era of Japanese economic, cultural and social transformation. Hula Girls director LEE Sang-il’s film Villain (u/c15+) and ZEZE Takahisa’s epic Heaven’s Story (u/c18+) are amongst the most prized films of recent Japanese cinema, leading the famous Kinema Junpo critics poll. Both films use stories of the ramifications of brutal murders to probe contemporary Japanese social values.