Cosponsored by the Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco, and NAATA (National Asian American Telecommunications Association)
Our third neo-eiga showcase offers quick-witted, innovative narratives, moving documentaries, and brilliantly stylized meditations on today's world. Crafted with obvious love for sound and image, these films are richly revelatory of everyday life in contemporary Japan, traveling the landscape from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Whether comedy, mystery, or melodrama, most portray characters adrift from traditional values, searching for connection-the leitmotif of recent Japanese cinema. At the same time, documentary filmmakers with affinities outside Japan evidence the expanding global awareness that is reshaping a once insular national identity. Themes of economic and family/group crises found in fictional features are shared by God's Children (filmed in the Philippines) and the Shinto-spirited Alexei and the Spring (near Chernobyl).
Independent productions are a vital force in Japanese cinema, and Pia Film Festival has nurtured young talent for twenty-five years, with juried awards and a scholarship fund for feature films. Assured, ambitious works accomplished on modest budgets, Pia films regularly make the line-ups of major international film festivals, and often find commercial release in Japan. We are pleased to present three recent Pia festival favorites (Hole in the Sky, Blue Chong, and Border Line) as well as a spotlight on director and musician Sogo Ishii. Ishii and other leading lights of contemporary Japanese cinema (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shunichi Nagasaki, Akihiko Shiota, to name but a few) showed their early works at Pia screenings, then moved on to successful careers.
We welcome Sogo Ishii as our special guest March 21 and 22 for rare screenings of his earlier films as well as the recent Electric Dragon 80,000 V, a palpable jolt of electricity.
A free program guide will be available at the screenings.
Mona Nagai
Curator
Notes by Jason Sanders
