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In with the old

Festivals start the new film year in earnest
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 9th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Killer sushi. Bright Future is one of the films in the Japanese festival.
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Festival of Contemporary Japanese Film

At Kino Lucerna
Jan. 11–16 at 6:30 p.m. nightly

Projekt 100: 2008

At various venues

Polar melting, Middle East upheaval, tanking bourses, political slagging matches Stateside: 2008 hardly needs seers to predict. We know what’s lumped on the future’s conveyor belt. The good news is that there are at least a few better things to anticipate, particularly if you’re a film festival fanatic: Febiofest, 15 Days of European Films, MOFFOM, Mezipatra and, ultimately, Karlovy Vary.
Prague is never without a film festival of some description, and this new year of packaged mini-Cannes is starting off in earnest with the Festival of Contemporary Japanese Film and the annual Projekt 100.
Every night at 6:30 at Kino Lucerna between Jan. 11 and 16 you can catch a different film from contemporary Japan, all of which will be screened with English subtitles. Here’s what to expect:
By Player (Sanmon Yakusha)—2000. From the great Kaneto Shindo, director of the dream-troubling Onibaba and Kuroneko from the ’60s, comes an insider’s homage to a bit player (the Japanese title for the film is Death of a Dime Actor). The dime actor is Taiji Tonoyama (played by Naoto Takenaka), a real-life drunken womanizer, who can not only be found in Onibaba, but also in Kohei Oguri’s beautiful Muddy River (1981) and Shohei Imamura’s Black Rain. Shindo’s cast includes Keiko Oginome and the director’s late wife, the great actress Nobuko Otowa. Jan. 11
Ramblers (Riarizumu no yado)—2003. Another film about film, this time with two young, hopeful filmmakers waiting to meet a Japanese film star whom they hope to talk into being in their project. Godot-like, the star doesn’t appear, so the two men, played by Hiroshi Yamamoto and Keishi Nagatsuka, wait. Director Nobuhiro Yamashita is the capo of Japanese slacker movies. Jan. 12
Bright Future (Akarui mirai)—2003. Director Kiyoshi Kurasawa (no relation to Akira) has, in turn, cornered the market in Japanese horror films (or “J-Horror” as genre buffs dub it). Bright Future is more of a psychological mindbender than slasher fare, and stars two of the most interesting young Japanese actors: Joe Odagiri and the Nippon Johnny Depp, Tadanobu Asano (Ichi the Killer). Jan. 13
Breathe In, Breathe Out (Shinkokyu no hitsuyo)—2004. A film by Tetsuo Shinohara about a group of young people who go to a remote island near Okinawa to harvest sugar cane. Jan. 14
Women in the Mirror (Kagami no onnatachi)—2002. A film about three generations of women connected by the bombing of Hiroshima. Yoshishige Yoshida directs. Jan. 15
Go—2001. Isao Yukisada’s film looks at the life of a young zainichi (long-term ethnic Korean resident of Japan), who tries to find a place for himself between nationalities. Jan. 16
Projekt 100 is an annual survey of the best of world cinema past and present, and this year’s roster is as impressive as previous ones. Projekt 100 is a movable feast that runs over several months, so watch the film listings for periodic show times and venues. This week, the films can mostly be caught at Aero, Bio Oko, Evald and Lucerna. Be forewarned, though: Foreign films usually have Czech, not English, subtitles.
The festival usually includes an important silent film, and this year’s offering is one of the greatest — Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It is the masterpiece of Expressionist cinema, not to mention of early German filmmaking.
A more modern German film, though no less terrifying, is Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God, with its mesmerizing performance by Klaus Kinski. Imagine finding hell where El Dorado is supposed to be. The New World is also explored in Terrence Malick’s The New World from 2005 — a film no Czech distribution company bothered to present. Malick’s cast includes Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer and Christian Bale.
There’s a double bill of Luis Bunuel’s Un chien andalou and the director’s mordant demolition of upper middle-class pieties in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. No less touched by a Spanish taste for the surreal is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cult classic Holy Mountain. Another ’70s milestone is Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, his first American film.
Of more recent films, there’s the Polish Plac Zbawiciela by the husband-and-wife team of Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos, who were responsible for the marvelous My Nikifor two years ago. There’s also an Iran/Iraq co-production by director Bahman Ghobadi, titled Turtles Can Fly, which looks at the crumbling situation in stateless Kurdistan. Ah, 2008.
 

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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