Films at the Whitney

04/09/2025

We will be welcoming the superb Japanese film director SAKAMOTO Junji to Yale this weekend, April 12 and 13, 2025. Sakamoto has consistently been one of the most successful and highly rated filmmakers in Japan over the past 30+ years, though his work in genre film has made him less known abroad. He will show his excellent Okiku and the World (which won multiple best picture awards in 2023) and his early work Checkmate. As we always try to do, we will also hold lunchtime discussions with Sakamoto on those days. A very special treat is that Shii Yukiko, Sakamoto's long-time producer, is also coming. Event links in the comments.

02/21/2025

If you're near New Haven, come to our screening of Obayashi Nobuhiko's Lonely Heart this Saturday, February 22, 2025, at 7pm in HQ L02. The director of House turns his lens towards youth and the nostalgic cycles of time in a film that best represents Obayashi's own approach to shojo (girl's) culture.
https://macmillan.yale.edu/eastasia/events/2025-02-22/lonely-heart

02/02/2025

We'll be showing Terayama Shuji's Pastoral: To Die in the Country (田園に死す/Den'en ni shisu) in 35mm film next Saturday, February 8, at 7pm in HQ L02 at Yale. Terayama was one of the most important figures in the postwar avant-garde, celebrated as a poet, playwright, and pioneer of experimental cinema. Pastoral is Terayama's second feature film and explores in his unique surreal imagery the relation of past and present, modernity and superstition, and cinema and poetry.
https://macmillan.yale.edu/eastasia/events/2025-02-08/pastoral-die-country

10/26/2024

Join us at Yale tomorrow night (Saturday Oct 26) for a screening of Hayashi Kaizo's To Sleep So as to Dream (1986), a wonderful black and white film recalling the days of silent cinema, of benshi, and jidaigeki stars.
Alice Cinema (HQ L01), 320 York St.
7PM
81 minutes

09/25/2024

This Friday and Saturday at Yale, we will be enjoying a visit by the Japanese comedian Muramoto Daisuke. Muramoto, famous first as a member of the very successful manzai duo, Woman Rush Hour, later moved into political comedy and finally stand up. He is currently in New York training in English stand up. We will show I Am A Comedian, the documentary directed by Hyuga Fumiari about Muramoto's life and experience in the Japanese media world, which shuts out those who do political comedy. We will also have Muramoto do stand-up sets in both English and Japanese the evening before. Both are open to the public.

Stand-up Comedy by Muramoto Daisuke
September 27, 2024, 6pm, Hopper Cabaret
https://macmillan.yale.edu/eastasia/events/2024-09/japanese-stand-comedy-set-1
I Am a Comedian screening, with Q&A by Muramoto Daisuke
September 28, 2024, 7pm, Alice Cinema
https://macmillan.yale.edu/eastasia/events/2024-09/i-am-comedian-2022-film-screening

04/18/2024

COMIC LEGACIES ON THE JAPANESE SILVER SCREEN, with director Ogigami Naoko

As many of you know, we at Yale have been running a 13-film series of Japanese film comedies since February. The last event in the series will be this Saturday, April 20, 2024, and will feature the screening of two films and a panel discussion with two special guests.

7:00: Kamome Diner (かもめ食堂 , 2006)
directed by Ogigami Naoko
1h 42m, 35mm

8:50: Q&A and Panel Discussion featuring director Ogigami Naoki and NFAJ curator Tomita Mika, with Xavi Sawada and Aaron Gerow

10:00 Make Way for the Jaguars! (進め！ジャガーズ 敵前上陸, 1968) (pictured)
directed by Maeda Yoichi
1h 23m, 35mm
World premiere of an English subtitled version made at Yale.

Location: Alice Cinema (L01), Humanities Quadrangle, Yale
Free and open to the public

https://ceas.yale.edu/events/double-feature-kamome-diner-2006-make-way-jaguars-1968-director-panel

I hope people in the vicinity can come and join us.

I also urge you to download the 20-page pamphlet for the series that the students and I prepared:
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ceas_film_series/3/

04/12/2024

Come to Yale this Saturday to see the penultimate night of films in Comedic Legacies of the Japanese Silver Screen. This time we will show the initial versions of two of postwar Japan's most popular comedy series: first, the initial film in the "Company President" series poking fun at corporate Japan; and second, Gambler's Luck, a preliminary version of the Tora-san series that also reflects Yamada Yoji's love of rakugo.
https://ceas.yale.edu/events/double-feature-nest-egg-1956-gamblers-luck-1966

04/05/2024

Great double feature this Saturday in our Comic Legacies on the Japanese Silver Screen series at Yale. The wild and crazy Noh gangster musical comedy Oh, My Bomb (Okamoto Kihachi) plus Sai Yoichi's award-winning zainichi comedy All Under the Moon.
https://ceas.yale.edu/events/double-feature-oh-my-bomb-1964-all-under-moon-1993

03/28/2024

Reminder that our Comic Legacies on the Japanese Silver Screen film series at Yale resumes this Saturday, March 30, at 7pm in HQ L01, with two films based on stories by Ibuse Masuji. Kawashima Yuzo's Room for Rent is one of my favorite Japanese comedies, but Shibuya Minoru's Doctor's Day Off is also a fascinating work.
https://ceas.yale.edu/events/double-feature-room-rent-1959-doctors-day-adventure-tokyo-1953

03/01/2024

The second night in our film series "Comic Legacies of the Japanese Silver Screen" will feature two of my all-time favorites: Yamanaka Sadao's Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo and Itami Mansaku's Akanishi Kakita. The first has the best sword fight parody in Japanese film history, the second, the best cat scene in Japanese cinema. Join us Saturday, March 2, in HQ L02 at Yale University, starting at 7pm.
https://ceas.yale.edu/events/double-feature-sazen-tange-and-pot-worth-million-ryo-1935-akanishi-kakita-capricious-young

02/23/2024

Comic Legacies on the Japanese Silver Screen begins this Saturday, February 24, 2024, at 7pm in the Alice Cinema! A rare program showing some of the classic comedies of Japanese cinema and featuring archival prints and a visit by director Ogigami Naoko. The series starts with films by Ozu Yasujiro, Makino Masahiro, and Saito Torajiro—and features slapstick ghosts and singing samurai! The series is co-sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies, the National Film Archive of Japan, and the Yale Film Archive, with support from the Japan Foundation. My students and I created a pamphlet that will be available for download from Saturday.
https://ceas.yale.edu/series-taxonomy/comic-legacies-japanese-silver-screen

11/28/2023

With help from the Japan Society in New York, we are pleased to present rarely screened films by two of the leaders of the postwar avant-garde in Japan: Terayama Shuji and Matsumoto Toshio. Terayama was a multi-talented artist, blazing a trail in 1960s and 1970s Japan as an award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, and filmmaker (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets). Matsumoto was one of the intellectual leaders of the Japanese New Wave, penning theoretical works that influenced many filmmakers, while as a filmmaker pursuing what he termed “avant-garde documentary,” feature film (Funeral Parade of Roses), and experimental cinema/video.

Saturday, December 2, 2023 - 7:00pm to 10:00pm
The Alice Cinema (Room L01), Humanities Quadrangle
320 York Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Grass Labyrinth 草迷宮 (1979, 50min), directed by Shuji Terayama.
Director Shuji Terayama uses the pretext of a young man’s determination to recover the lyrics and music to a song he loved in his childhood in an exploration of widely variant perceptions of reality. Akira (Takeshi Wakamatsu) is haunted by a “bouncing ball” song. (Mubi.com)

Dogura Magura ドグラ・マグラ (1988, 109min), directed by Toshio Matsumoto.
On the day of his marriage, Ichiro Kure kills the bride, goes insane as a result and loses his memory. In the hospital he becomes the victim of the professors’ ambitions and lives from now on in a world of fear and horrifying visions. (Mubi.com)

https://ceas.yale.edu/events/grass-labyrinth-cao-mi-gong-1979-dogura-magura-doguramagura-1988-film-screening

With help from the Japan Society in New York, we are pleased to present rarely screened films by two of the leaders of the postwar avant-garde in Japan: Terayama Shuji and Matsumoto Toshio. Terayama was a multi-talented artist, blazing a trail in 1960s and 1970s Japan as an award-winning poet, novel...