The Embassy of Japan and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts will present Premiere Japan 07, a selection of Japanese films not yet released in the UK at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) from 14 to 16 September 2007.

FULLY BOOKED

SOME TICKETS MAY STILL BE AVAILABLE FROM BAFTA
www.bafta.org; Email: events@bafta.org; Tel.: 020 7292 5858

Special Events

Saturday, 15 September 2007, 18:00 - 18:45

HULA GIRLS SPECIAL EVENTS

Tony Rayns in Conversation with Director Lee Sang-il (Limited free seats available)
The young Korean-Japanese director, Lee Sang-il, who was catapulted to fame in Japan with his box-office hit, HULA GIRLS, looks at clips from his previous films and discusses his career and hopes for the future with film critic, Tony Rayns. His feature-film debut in 2002, BORDER LINE, won him instant acclaim but it has been for HULA GIRLS that he won Best Director and Best Screenplay at this year's Japanese Academy Awards.

& POST SCREENING Q&A with the DIRECTOR

Sunday, 16 September 2007, 18:15 - 16:45

NITABOH SPECIAL EVENT

Live music performance by Okinawa Sanshin-kai

Friday, 14 September, 19:30 | Sunday, 16 September, 17:00

MEMORIES OF TOMORROW

Tsutsumi Yukihiko | Japan | 2006 | 122 mins

Saeki Masayuki is a successful manager of an advertising agency who, although not yet fifty years old, is diagnosed with the early onset of Alzheimer��s disease. Through a simple yet poignant storyline, the film examines the how he, his wife, his daughter and his colleagues cope with the disease��s progression. Lacking neither tenderness nor honesty, it features solid performances from the ever-popular Watanabe Ken, who won a Japanese Academy award for his leading role and Higuchi Kanako as his wife Saeki Emiko.

Saturday, 15 September, 15:00

TEN NIGHTS OF DREAMS
Featuring the work of ten directors | Japan | 2007 | 110 mins

��I am an ambitious man, who wants the people of one hundred years hence to solve my riddle.�� So wrote author Natsume Soseki, whose collection of short, fantastic stories, published a century ago next year, forms the basis of this remarkable new film. Eleven directors - from veterans Ichikawa Kon and the late Jissoji Akio to youthful talents such as Yamashita Nobuhiro and Nishikawa Miwa - have crafted imaginative recreations of Soseki's ten mysterious dreams, in a film which combines live-action with animation and colour with monochrome. It is a visually splendid evocation of an unreal world.

Saturday, 15 September, 19:00

HULA GIRLS

Lee Sang-il | Japan | 2006 | 110 mins

It is 1965 and in Japan, the country has started to shift from coal to oil. One by one the old mining towns begin their long slow decline. But for one small town way up north, its leaders and mining company officials have come up with an idea to develop Japan's first Hawaiian Village. And what's a Hawaiian Village without a troupe of Hula dancers? The only problem is, no one knows how to do the dance or even knows what the Hula is! In this touching comedy, the scepticism and conservatism of the locals is gradually overcome as their daughters fall under the spell of one talented and determined dance instructor from Tokyo; a Japanese Full Monty?

Click here for the details of the special event.

Sunday, 16 September, 14:30

NITABOH

Nishizawa Akio | Japan | 2004 | 90 mins

Set in mid-nineteenth century Japan, this anime focuses on the early years of musician Nitaro Akimoto (1857-1928), creator of the Tsugaru style of shamisen playing. The eight-year old Nitaboh, as he is known, is stricken with an illness that leaves him blind. He inherits the shamisen, a three-string banjo-like instrument, once used by his mother, and is taught its basics by a blind travelling shamisen player. Taking the instrument to new levels, Nitaboh pioneers a revolutionary new music style that would impress Jimi Hendrix; an animated film for all the family filled with the electrifying fusion Tsugaru-jamisen music of J-pop star, Agatsuma Hiromitsu.

Click here for the details of the special event.

Sunday, 16 September, 19:30

THE BLOSSOMING OF ETSUKO KAMIYA
Kuroki Kazuo | Japan | 2006 | 111 mins

This screening is a tribute to director Kuroki Kazuo, who died in April 2006 aged 75, before this, his final work, was released. Like many of his later films, its subject is the defining trauma for Japanese of his generation: the Second World War. But there is no action or violence in this bittersweet comic drama about a young woman torn between two suitors in the last months of the conflict. Kuroki directs with his characteristic restraint, subtlety and sympathy for the feelings of ordinary people in difficult situations, qualities which make this a fitting swansong.

BOOKING AVAILABLE FROM 14 AUGUST 2007

We shall start to take email bookings from Tuesday, 14 August.
Your exclusive FREE film tickets* are only available from the Embassy of Japan from this date at films@jpembassy.org.uk.

Alternatively, you may wish to apply directly to BAFTA at events@bafta.org or on 020 7292 5858. Further information can be found at www.bafta.org.

Tickets will be limited to one screening per person.

*subject to availability

When booking, we need:

• your full name
• your postal address
• your email address
• a daytime telephone number
• to know whether you wish to apply for a single ticket or a pair
• your guest��s full name
• the film you wish to see

Please book early
Only successful applicants will be contacted with a booking number

Maximum of ONE film per person