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Mizuho Nishikubo (Miyamoto Musashi: Soken ni haseru yume, Japan 2009)
Location: Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema, SF Intl Animation Festival
Tickets: General admission $12.50, Senior $11, SFFS member $10 [Buy Tickets]

Quite likely the first anime-style documentary, this wholly unique film penned by master anime director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers) is set in Japan’s early Edo period during the early 17th century and focuses on the real-life events surrounding the development of the Niten Ichi-ryu (a classical style of Japanese swordsmanship) by Musashi Miyamoto. Oshii playfully questions the tale’s—and his own film’s— veracity, weaving together facts and myths while alternating between reverence and silliness in his treatment of events and exaggerations about the “the seeker of the way of the invincible sword” in this refreshingly offbeat look at militarism and machismo. While there is a relatively recent prevalence of animated nonfiction features including  Chicago 10, Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis, the specific use of anime with nonfiction remains rare. One of only a handful of true animation auteurs, Oshii, throughout his career, continually has reformulated the uses and meanings of animation, presenting a nuanced and urgent personal world view in a series of changing contexts and with massively popular results. As Oshii states, “My goal is to always make a new kind of movie that nobody has seen before.” Once again, He has definitely succeeded with this genre-bending marvel.

U.S. Premiere. Written by Mamoru Oshii. Photographed by Hisashi Ezura. (72 min, Production I.G.)

Location: Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall (Space is limited and is on a first-come, first served basis.)
FREE general admission courtesy of Target

Films by Akira Kurosawa
Arguably the most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa had a career that spanned from the Second World War to the early nineties and that stands as a monument of artistic, entertainment, and personal achievement. With the production of Seven Samurai (1954), the most popular and important Japanese film of its time, Kurosawa began a long and fruitful obsession with medieval Japan. Kurosawa pioneered widescreen cinematography in Japan, and his films inspired the “Spaghetti Western” genre in Italy. Kurosawa reinvigorated the samurai film genre in Japan and revitalized the American Western in the process.

2:00 pm
Sanjuro
Japan, 1962, 96 minutes, Black and White, DVD, not rated
Japanese with English subtitles

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Akira Kurosawa’s tightly paced Sanjuro. In this sly companion piece to Yojimbo, the jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan’s evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a “proper” samurai on its ear.

Source: http://www.asianart.org/samurai/films.htm#july5

Location: Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall (Space is limited and is on a first-come, first served basis.)
FREE general admission courtesy of Target

Films by Akira Kurosawa
Arguably the most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa had a career that spanned from the Second World War to the early nineties and that stands as a monument of artistic, entertainment, and personal achievement. With the production of Seven Samurai (1954), the most popular and important Japanese film of its time, Kurosawa began a long and fruitful obsession with medieval Japan. Kurosawa pioneered widescreen cinematography in Japan, and his films inspired the “Spaghetti Western” genre in Italy. Kurosawa reinvigorated the samurai film genre in Japan and revitalized the American Western in the process.

11:00 am
Yojimbo (The Bodyguard)
Japan, 1961, 110 minutes, Black and White, DVD, not rated
Japanese with English subtitles

The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic Yojimbo. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars) and Walter Hill (Last Man Standing), this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential films ever produced.

Source: http://www.asianart.org/samurai/films.htm#july5