Seattle Japanese Garden Film Series 2013

by Monzie

These films are for all the garden’s volunteers.  The Tateuchi Community Room opens for set-up at 12:45 pm.  Films begin at 1:00 pm. Discussion follows.

Thursday, September 26:   My Neighbor Totoro

Director:  Hayao Miyazaki

In this leading example of Japan’s highly popular animated films, two young girls, Satsuki and her younger sister Mei, move into a house in the country with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother.  Satsuki and Mei discover that the nearby forest is inhabited by magical creatures called Totoro (pronounced toe-toe-ro).  They soon befriend Totoro and have several magical adventures.  86 minutes.  2006

Thursday, October 24:    Shishu (Poetic Beauty) Intuition and Feeling in the Japanese Garden

Director:  Marc Keane with Yasuo Kitayama, Joji Hirota

Harmonious balance of thought and feeling, spirit and matter, is at the heart of the Japanese aesthetic.  Shishu is an elegant and poetic study of the Japanese garden that draws together the diverse threads that makes up one of the world’s oldest garden traditions and covers nature and man as sacred, origins of the Japanese garden aesthetic, Zen garden culture, the tea garden, the period from the Edo garden forward and the heart in the garden.  53 minutes. 

Thursday, November 14:     Hula Girls
Director:  San-il Lee

Young women in a small Japanese mining town look forward to renewing their community’s declining fortunes by building a Hawaiian tourist attraction. The film is based on the true story of Joban coal mine in which dwindling production caused the company to develop a radical “Hawaii Paradise” tourism plan in 1964.  The mine is not far from the site of the Fukushima nuclear plant.  108 minutes.  2006.

Playbill by: Shizue, Aleks, Dewey, Joan, the film non-committee