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Melbourne Leg of 15th Japanese Film Festival Screening Until Dec/6
posted on by Georgia Blair
The Melbourne leg of the 15th Japanese Film Festival is running until the 6th of December, with screenings being held at ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and Melbourne Central Hoyts. The festival has traveled around the country and features a wide variety of live-action and animated Japanese film, including guest appearances, documentaries on the recovery from March's earthquake and tsunami disaster and selected free screenings.
Of particular interest to anime fans are the following screenings:
Arrietty - Sunday, December 4, 2:00PM, ACMI
Studio Ghibli's 2010 film based on Mary Norton's novel The Borrowers. Arrietty is one of the tiny people known as Borrowers who gather materials from the humans in the house they share. When she meets Sho, one of the new inhabitants of her home, they become friends and break the rule that Borrowers and Humans must never meet. The film will be released nationally on January 12, 2012.
Buddha: The Great Departure - Thursday, December 1, 6:30 PM, Hoyts
The first in a series of films adapting Buddha, Osamu Tezuka's epic manga series telling the life of the Buddha. The Great Departure follows Prince Siddhartha before his search for enlightenment, in a time when the people of India are plagued by drought, war and the restrictions of their social castes.
GANTZ - Friday, December 2, 6:00 PM, ACMI
Gantz: Perfect Answer - Friday, December 2, 8:30 PM, ACMI
GANTZ, a mysterious black orb, summons the newly-dead to an apartment in Tokyo, gives them weapons, and forces them to fight vicious aliens to earn their freedom. The live-action films based on Hiroya Oku's violent action manga will be screened on the same night.
Space Battleship Yamato - Saturday, December 3, 6:30 PM, Hoyts
A live-action adaptation of the science fiction anime and manga created by Leiji Metsumeto (Galaxy Express 999), starring SMAP member Takuya Kimura. Aliens launch a nuclear attack on Earth that fills its atmosphere with deadly radiation. To obtain a device that will save humanity, the famous World War II battleship Yamato is refitted as a spaceship to travel across the galaxy.
The Lady Shogun and Her Men - Tuesday, December 6, 6:30 PM, Hoyts
A live-action adaptation of Ōoku: The Inner Chambers by Fumi Yoshinaga (Antique Bakery), set in an alternate history where a virus killed almost every man in feudal Japan. Women have taken up their roles, including the highest position in Japan, the shogun, who the only one allowed to keep a harem of men.
The festival's full schedule and tickets are available on its website.
