Booksigning followed by film Battle Royale at 7:00.

For a walk on the wild side of Japanese cinema, join us for a booksigning with writer/critic Patrick Macias, who will read from TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion and introduce Kinji Fukasaku's controversial Battle Royale. Monster, horror, pink, karate, gangster-Macias shares his passion for the genre pictures that fueled the success of the postwar Japanese movie industry and influenced many of today's leading directors. He writes, "Japanese aesthetics of composition and design made their genre films truly special. During this quarter–century (1950-1976) streak of Japanese film, no one consistently made more handsome pop films, save perhaps for the Italians..."

In addition to writing about film and Asian pop culture for the SF Bay Guardian and other publications, Patrick Macias is the coauthor of Japan Edge: The Insiders' Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture and Fresh Pulp: Dispatches from the Japanese Pop Culture Front. He was a panelist in the Exploding Cinema section of the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2000. Macias's latest book illuminates a number of the gold nuggets from Japanese studios in the PFA Collection, making this evening the perfect context in which to show one of our rare yakuza films, Blood and Law, in the second half of our program.

TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion ($19.95, Cadence Books) is sold in the Museum Store and at the booksigning. At the booksigning everyone receives the 10% members discount.