Sunday, May 21 at 7:00PM

     Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Directed by Shinobu Yaguchi
Japan 1990, DCP, color, 72 min. Japanese with English subtitles

A spirited, magically inventive and charming film full of large dashes of French New Wave quirkiness, and winner of 1990’s Pia Film Festival grand prize, The Rain Women set the stage for Shinobu Yaguchi ’s later career in offbeat comedies such as Waterboys and Swing Girls. In the first part of the film, two young women live together and create their own eccentric adventures, transforming their (always rainy) everyday environment into an enchanted playground, full of pop-musical sequences and synchronized tooth brushing performances. As the second half of the film shifts to both deeper psychological themes and a more meta-filmic playfulness, Yaguchi develops a bewitchingly melancholic atmosphere of unpredictability. Often compared to Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, the film is a fascinating example of the exploration of the lines between filmic reality and filmic fiction—a signature jishu film obsession.

UNK

Directed by Macoto Tezuka
Japan 1979, DCP, color, 15 min. Japanese with English subtitles

In UNK, the son of legendary manga and anime artist Osamu Tezuka created one of the loveliest odes to both special effects cinema and the handmade 8mm aesthetic. As a young woman navigates the city, strange things begin to happen—leading her into a journey that is part science fiction and part fantasy, full of references to magical moments in cinema’s past.

Film descriptions by Alexander Zahlten.