Sun. July 22, 2018 @ 2pm

DESTINY: THE TALE OF KAMAKURA
(TJFF Encore Screening)

In his latest, director Yamazaki (Always: Sunset of 3rd Street, The Eternal Zero, The Man Called Pirate) creates massive, fanciful special effects in service of a gentle story of a man’s love for his wife.

Masakazu Isshiki is a professor and mystery writer who marries Akiko, one of his students, and brings her to live in Kamakura – a town rife with spirits and mythical beasts. Together they solve mysterious cases taking place around them. When Akiko is taken to the next world by the Goddess of Death, Masakazu is heartbroken and decides to follow and bring her home.

DESTINY 鎌倉ものがたり

彼女がその名を知らない鳥たち

BIRDS WITHOUT NAMES
(Special Summer Screening: July)

Towako lives with Jinji a man 15 years her senior. Lounging around their tiny squalid apartment, she pines after Kurosaki, a callous lover who nearly beat her to death 8 years earlier. She thinks little of casually sleeping around and is openly disgusted by the earnest blue-collar Jinji who is slavishly, even masochistically, devoted to Towako and her happiness. When the police inform her that Kurosaki has been missing for five years, she begins to suspect Jinji may be involved in the disappearance. Is there something darker lurking behind his damaged, eager-to-please façade?

Based on Mahokaru Numata’s novel, this is an intelligent, tightly controlled and captivating piece of cinema that defies genre definitions, oscillating between character study, thriller and melodrama. The film is built around a killer twist and towering, award-winning performance by Yu Aoi.

Sunday, July 29 at 1pm / 123 min
Japanese dialogue with English subtitles
$10 JCCC Member
$12 General

おじいちゃん、死んじゃったって

GOODBYE, GRANDPA!
(Special Summer Screening: July)

This “21st Century update of Juzo Itami’s The Funeral” opens as Yoshiko receives a phone call about her grandfather’s death when she is having sex with her boyfriend. With this the preparations and funeral for her grandfather begin, involving a slovenly uncle, termagant aunt, shut-in cousin, and a grandma suffering from dementia. No one cries at the funeral and, as eccentric family members true feelings percolate to the surface, Yoshiko starts to think about “life” and “death” and becomes determined to visit the Ganges River in India where people believe they can free their souls for eternity.

An understated black comedy of family dysfunction steeped in specific Japanese funerary and mourning rituals.

Sunday, July 29 at 3:30pm / 104 min
Japanese dialogue with English subtitles
$10 JCCC Member
$12 General