CEAS Film Series

Event
Posted : March 16, 2022

RASHOMON Japan, 1950 Directed by Akira Kurosawa Cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa Starring Toshirō Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura Based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story In a Grove NEW 35mm print from the Yale Film Archive. Approx. 88 min. Introduction by Aaron Gerow, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Film & Media Studies Rape and murder in 12th-century Kyoto, as seen by four conflicting witnesses. Adapted from two stories by the great Ryunosuke Akutagawa, its worldwide acclaim (Venice Grand Prize, Best Foreign Film Oscar...

Event
Posted : March 16, 2022

THE IDIOT Japan, 1951 Directed by Akira Kurosawa Starring Toshirō Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Masayuki Mori 35mm print courtesy of The Japan Foundation. Approx. 146 min. Introduction by Aaron Gerow, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Film & Media Studies AK’s powerful adaptation of favorite author Dostoevsky. The triangle: Masayuki Mori the holy innocent “Myshkin;” Mifune the homicidal “Rogozin;” and Ozu’s loveable Setsuko Hara as the vicious “Natasha.” When the producers asked him to cut his 4½ hour original, Kurosawa famously replied “If you want to...

Event
Posted : March 16, 2022

A WIFE’S HEART Japan, 1956 Directed by Mikio Naruse Starring Toshirō Mifune, Hideko Takamine, Keiju Kobayashi 35mm print courtesy Japan Foundation. Approx. 98 min. Introduction by Aaron Gerow, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Film & Media Studies Mifune as romantic lead? Every time hard-working wife Hideko Takamine (Floating Clouds, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs) raises enough yen for that coffee shop, her family scarfs it; but visiting bank loan officer Toshirō, here sharply dressed, may have the answer. The intensity of the chemistry...

Event
Posted : January 2, 2020

One day, a young woman named Blanca is saved by Xuan, a snake catcher from a nearby village. She has lost her memory, and together they go on a journey to discover her real identity, developing deeper feelings for one another along the way. But as they learn more about her past, they uncover a darker plot of supernatural forces vying for power, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Conceived as a prequel to one of the most ancient and enduring stories in Chinese history, White Snake presents a sumptuous tale of trickster demons, deadly mythical beasts, assassins, high-flying...

Event
Posted : October 31, 2019

Sunday Double Feature Screening of Fukuoka (2019), directed by Zhang Lu, starts at 4pm and will be followed by a Q&A with the director. Screening of Jinpa (2018), directed by Pema Tseden, starts at 7pm and will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

Event
Posted : October 10, 2019

煙突の見える場所 (Entotsu no mieru basho, 1953) Director Heinosuke Gosho Cast Kinuyo Tanaka, Ken Uehara, Hideko Takamine Screenplay Hideo Oguni, Rinzo Shiina Cinematography Mitsuo Miura 108 minutes In sight of industrial chimneys, Ken Uehara and Kinuyo Tanaka are so poor they carefully mark the calendar to avoid any unaffordable surprises; their upstairs renters, Hiroshi Akutagawa (son of author of the Rashomon stories) and Hideko Takamine, sedulously keep it separate rooms. But then on their doorstep arrives… The masterpiece of the least-known master of slice-of-life.    

Event
Posted : October 10, 2019

Directed by Mitsuo Sato & Kyoichi Yamaoka 110 minutes Produced at the height of Japan’s economic boom of the 1980’s, Yama documents the struggles of unionised day-labourers in the San’ya district of Tokyo, on the frontlines of a violent class war. It is a film for the workers, intended to function as a weapon in their struggle – one that cost director Sato his life. On 22 December 22 1985, during filming, he was murdered by Yakuza gangsters whom Sato intended to expose for their criminal involvement in the restructuring of the job market. A collective of directors headed by Kyoichi...

Event
Posted : October 10, 2019

Kigeki: Nippon no Obaachan. 喜劇:にっぽんのお婆ちゃん (1962) Director Tadashi Imai Cast Chôko Iida, Tanie Kitabayashi, Chôchô Miyako Screenplay Yôko Mizuki Cinematography Shunichirô Nakao 95 minutes Two obaachans become fast friends listening to music in front of a record store. They both boast about their loving sons but in reality, one had just escaped a retirement home and the other was looking for an escape from her son and daughter-in-law. With nowhere to go, the two wander around, befriending a cosmetics salesman and a kind waitress who give them beer. This biting social satire starring two...

Event
Posted : October 10, 2019

Director Satsuo Yamamoto Cast Sumiko Hidaka, Sen Hara, Seiji Miyaguchi Screenplay Saburô Tateno Cinematography Minoru Maeda 140 minutes A large-scale on-set agitprop drama based on a classic novel about a real-life labor struggle at a printing factory in 1926. The title refers to tenement houses that received no sunlight, by a sewage river in Shitamachi. An independently-produced epic, featuring 50,000 people on screen, follows two romances amidst the passionate struggle against oppressive forces.

Event
Posted : August 29, 2019

Highlighting some of the most exciting new voices in cinema, New York Japan CineFest presents a program of short films by emerging Japanese and Japanese-American filmmakers. Followed by a discussion with Megumi Nishikura (director, Minidoka, Joseph Lachman (YC ‘15; actor, Minidoka), and Masayoshi Nakamura (animation director, Albatross Soup). Megumi Nishikura is passionate about addressing our global and social issues through documentary storytelling. She spent five years working for the United Nations, producing and directing documentaries on environmental issues such as climate change and...

Event
Posted : July 1, 2019

The Great Buddha + 大佛普拉斯 Taiwan’s Entry for Best Foreign-Language Film at the 91st OSCARS® Underlining the gap between have-nots’ lives and elites’ world by switching between black and white and glamorous colors, THE GREAT BUDDHA+ vividly illustrates a corrupted village in rural southern Taiwan with memorable style, heartfelt empathy, and whimsical humor.  Security guard Pickle and his trash collector friend Belly Button kill time together in night shifts watching the American-educated boss’s dash-cam recordings of his various sexual encounters with women. Against the buddies’ will,...

Event
Posted : March 12, 2019

The Korean Buddhist nun and movie director Ven. Daehae will be presenting the screening of her film “The Sermon on the Mount” (2017), winner of three awards at Russia’s Cheboksary International Film Festival. The film shares the story of eight young Koreans meeting together in a cave to seek the truth about Jesus’ teachings. After the showing, Ven. Daehae will answer questions from the audience.

Event
Posted : April 16, 2018

This lecture is part of the “Monsters in Motion: Spring Film Series on Animated Monsters and/in East Asia.” Animation (donghua pian) and martial arts films (wuxia pian) have demonstrated close affinity with each other in the history of Chinese cinema. They overlap historically and conceptually. The martial arts films frequently rely on various animation techniques (e.g. stop motion, cel animation, computer graphics) to create special effects in spectacular fighting scenes. Chinese animations often take...

Event
Posted : March 26, 2018

Directed by Raman Hui, 118 mins Dream Sky Entertainment et al., China DCP, Subtitled in English Despite its unorthodox visual effects, which blend live-action martial artists together with digitally rendered creatures from the “monster realm,” Monster Hunt swiftly became the highest-grossing film in China during the year of its release. Before relocating to China to direct this fantastical action-comedy, Hong Kong native Raman Hui served as supervising animator and co-director on a number of projects at DreamWorks, including the Shrek series. Nearly 70% of Monster Hunt had to be reshot after...

Event
Posted : March 26, 2018

Directed by Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun, 100 mins Beijing Enlight Media, Biantian (Beijing) Media Company, China DCP, Subtitled in English The production of Big Fish & Begonia traces all the way back to 2004, when artists Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun created a short, promotional animated work by the same name. Following its positive reception, Liang and Zhang founded a production company, Biantian (Beijing) Media, with the intent of turning the project into a feature-length film. After more than ten years of starts and stops resulting from a perpetual lack of adequate funding, Liang and Zhang...

Event
Posted : February 19, 2018

Directed & Written by Satoshi Kon (Sony Pictures Classics, 2006, 90 min., 35mm) Dr. Atsuko Chiba is a genius scientist by day, and a kick-ass dream warrior named PAPRIKA by night. In this psychedelic sci-fi adventure, it will take the skills of both women to save the world… In the near future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called PT has been invented. Through a device called the “DC Mini” it is able to act as a “dream detective” to enter into people’s dreams and explore their unconscious thoughts. Before the government can pass a bill authorizing the use of such...

Event
Posted : February 19, 2018

Directed by Jung Henin & Laurent Boileau (GKIDS, 2012, 74 min. DCP) This remarkable animated documentary traces the unconventional upbringing of the filmmaker Jung Henin, one of thousands of Korean children adopted by Western families after the end of the Korean War. It is the story of a boy stranded between two cultures. Sepia-toned animated vignettes – some humorous and some poetic – track Jung from the day he first meets his new blond siblings, through elementary school, and into his teenage years, when his emerging sense of identity begins to create fissures at home and ignite the...

Event
Posted : February 9, 2018

Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo (Tokyo Movie Shinsha, 1988, 125 min., 35mm)  Clandestine army activities threaten the war torn city of Neo-Tokyo when a mysterious being with powerful psychic abilities escapes his prison and inadvertently draws a violent motorcycle gang into a heinous web of experimentation. As a result, a biker with a twisted mind embarks on a path of war, seeking revenge against a society what once called him weak.  5:00 PM - Reception (Room 108, Whitney Humanities Center) 6:30 PM - Film Screening (Auditorium, Whitney Humanities Center) Introduction by Jason Douglass, Series...

Event
Posted : February 22, 2017

Directed by Itō Daisuke (Nikkatsu, 1931, 61 min. DVD) One of the unique pleasures of Japanese film culture is that all silent films were shown with a benshi, a figure who stood next to the screen explaining the film and essentially dubbing the dialogue. The benshi Kataoka Ichirō preserves this rare verbal art by traveling the world and narrating the masterpieces of Japanese film.  Kataoka will perform for Yale audiences Jirōkichi the Rat, one of the few surviving silent films of the pioneer master of the Japanese samurai movie, Itō Daisuke. This features the great Ōkōchi Denjirō playing...

Event
Posted : October 13, 2016

Directed by ​Qin Xiaoyu and Wu Feiyue (MEDOC/Shanghai Eternity, 2015, 96 min.) An assembly line worker in an Apple factory who commits suicide at the young age of 24, leaving behind 200 poems of despair—“I swallowed an iron moon…..”; a guileless lathe operator who is rebuffed at every turn, living in the world of his poetry; a female clothing factory worker who lives in poverty but writes poetry rich in dignity and love; a coalminer who works deep in the earth year round, trying to contact and make peace with the spirits of his dead coworkers through his poetry; and a goldmine demolitions...

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