Director: Fran Rubel Kuzui
Starring: Carrie Hamilton, Diamond Yukai, Masumi Harukawa.
Runtime: 99 min.
TOKYO POP 1988
Disillusioned with her life in New York, bleach-blonde rocker Wendy hops on a plane to Tokyo with dreams of making it as a singer. While hostessing at a karaoke bar, she meets Hiro, whose fledgling band is hungry for their big break. When Hiro enlists Wendy to be the band’s lead singer, the two form a romantic and musical connection that leads to unexpected if unsustainable fame. From Fran Rubel Kuzui (director of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer), this newly restored gem of 80s independent cinema takes audiences on a bright, breezy, tongue-in-cheek tour through Japan’s economic bubble era and its American pop cultural influences.
Friday, September 8
Sunday, September 10
THE PIED PIPER 1986
Director Jiří Barta’s stop-motion animated masterpiece, based on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, is set in a dark and twisted medieval village of narrow streets and weird Gothic arches, half-CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and half-Jan van Eyck. The money-obsessed citizens, carved out of wood blocks and speaking in an onomatopoeic babble, are like George Grosz caricatures, literally spouting coins from their mouths instead of words. The rats are far more organic and sympathetic, made of real fur and whiskers, constantly tunneling and burrowing under the towering arches and cobblestone streets above. (In one of the film’s many surreal moments, a rat emerges from a gargoyle’s gaping maw.) Fans of fellow Czech animation legend Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay will adore Barta’s eerie, Expressionist gem, recently restored for its first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release through Krátký Film Praha, Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company.
Screens with a new restoration of Jiří Barta’s rare short film "The Vanished World of Gloves", a marvelous and eccentric tour through cinema history told through animated gloves. 1982, 16min.
Director: Jiří Barta
Starring: Oldřich Kaiser, Jiří Lábus, Michal Pavlíček, Vilém Čok
Runtime: 56 min.