A Collision of Past and Present:

Japanese Film Festival

Friday March 10 & Saturday March 11, 2006 - Austin College, Sherman, Texas

Funded by a Title VI Department of Education  Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Grant
 

All Events are Free and Open to the Public

Friday March 10, 6:30 pm

"Reinventing Tradition:  Family, Nation, and Nature in Japanese Film"

Lecture by Dr. Michael Baskett
      Michael Baskett is an Assistant Professor in Film Studies at  University of Kansas.  Before receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. in Japanese Film and Literature from UCLA, he worked in various capacities in the Japanese film industry including distribution, exhibition, and production. He was an assistant director on such films as the 1995 feature film Flirt directed by Hal Hartley (Henry Fool, Amateur).  Baskett specializes in Japanese film studies and his research interests include Asian film, silent and early world cinema, colonial and diasporia cinemas, film/media history and criticism, and postcolonial film studies.

Friday March 10, 8:00 pm

Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961)     
   
     "Japan's definitive leading man, Toshiro Mifune, wields wits that are even deadlier than his Katana. Funny, clever, and never a dull moment." - Brian Mckay, efilmcritic.com

     “This is one of Japan’s great contributions to cinema, the inspiration for spaghetti Westerns and the introduction of a new kind of film hero.  If this sounds like a classic Western, that’s because it almost is. But not quite.  Sanjuro is the hero, but he isn’t a perfect-looking, perfect-behaving good-guy. He’s a grimy, toothpick chewing, constantly scratching, unemployed samurai warrior. It’s the 1860s and the social order has broken down. Sanjuro is a masterless samurai with no sense of direction …until he comes across a town that has been taken over by two gangs, where he sees potential employers and an almost endless selection of scummy criminals. 
     Yojimbo is at once a dark comedy and a morality play.  Sanjuro might at first seem shiftless and unprincipled, but before long, he proves to be quite the opposite. Although the bad guys don’t figure it out until it’s almost too late, he’s a friend of the downtrodden non-combatants. Along the way, he exposes the stupidity, arrogance and corruption of the schemers and thugs.” – Brian Webster, ApolloGuide.com 

(Running time: 110 Minutes)
 

Saturday March 11, 6:30 pm

Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953)

     “A simple story simply told, Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo-set tale is widely considered one of the great classics of world cinema. Following an elderly Japanese couple - Shukishi (Chishu Ryu) and his wife Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) - as they visit their middle class children in the city, Tokyo Story charts the inevitability of change, disappointment and death with a resigned air of mute acceptance... and yet it's one of the most emotionally involving dramas ever made. “ 
                                   – Jamie Russell, BBC online

 Ozu was the most austere of the Japanese masters—few camera movements or close-ups, a rigorously plain editing manner. His attention was intently focused on his people, who were usually ordinary members of the middle class. This is one of his most approachable movies: An old couple comes to the big city to visit their children, who are more irritated than pleased by this interruption of their lives, which are scarcely glamorous. "Isn't life disappointing?" one of them says. "Yes, it is" another replies. But this wry, ironic movie is anything but, as it patiently, wisely explores the . . .universal tensions between the generations.—R.S. Time Magazine's Best 100 Movies Ever Made

(Running Time: 136 minutes)
 

Saturday March 11, 9:30 pm

“Hayao Miyazaki's breathtakingly beautiful and poetic “Spirited Away” - a Japanese cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz" - is such a landmark in animation that labeling it a masterpiece almost seems inadequate.” -Lou Lumenick, NY Post   

 Spirited Away is about 10 year old Chihiro, a little girl lost in a derelict theme park whose soaring main mansion is a weekend bathhouse for the gods. It's the "other world" of gods and monsters, an inconceivable place where inconceivable things happen. Her parents have turned into pigs, as parents sometimes will, and now Chihiro, who is sullen and a little bit bratty, must start working at the bath house to survive.  However, in this difficult world, she discovers many things, and becomes more lively than she ever was. Animated with a painterly richness, this is a story with depth and complexity often missing in American animation  -adapted from Nausicaa.net 

(Running Time: 125 minutes)
 

For more information email hrushing@austincollege.edu or call 903.813.2048

Funded by a Title VI Department of Education  Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Grant

Driving Directions to Austin College

 Hoxie-Thompson Auditorium is located on the second floor of Sherman Hall,
916 N. Grand Avenue,
on the Austin College campus.
Click here for a campus map.

From the South (Dallas—US Hwy 75)
From US Hwy 75 North, take exit 61 for State Hwy 91 (Texoma Pkwy).  Turn right at the second traffic light onto Grand Ave.  Continue on Grand Ave across the overpass.   Sherman Hall is1/2 mile on the right on the Austin College campus.

From the East (US Hwy. 82 or St. Hwy. 11)
From Highways 82 or 11, take State Highway 56 west, turn right on Grand Ave.  Sherman Hall  is 1/2 mile on left on the Austin College campus.

From the West (US Hwy. 82)
From US Highway 82, take Exit 21 for State Highway 91 (Texoma Pkwy), turn right on Texoma Pkwy and proceed to third traffic light (Grand Avenue).  Turn right on Grand Ave and continue on Grand across the overpass.  Sherman Hall is 1/2 mile on the right on the Austin College campus.

From the North (US Hwy 75)
From US Hwy 75, take exit 63 to US Hwy 82.  Travel east on US Hwy 82 and follow directions “From the west” above.