Zipangu Fest 2011

This is the second edition of Zipangu Fest, a film festival dedicated to bringing the best and rarest of Japanese cinema to the UK. This year the festival is honoured to be at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from the 18-24 November 2011. This year’s edition presents an interesting mix of shorts, animations, features and documentaries, giving film fans a broad choice of everything from retro to horror, experimental to music, and comedy to drama.

One of our stars this year is most certainly The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen, a retro horror from 1938 based on the Japanese bakeneko mythology. This rare title, featuring Japan’s very first scream queen, has been specially resurrected by Zipangu Fest, with the assistance of the National Film Center, National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy (JVTA).

The original Beyond Anime programme is back again this year with a fresh selection of innovative animations to challenge our notions of the word ‘animation’. Beyond Anime : The Outer Limits once again inspires us with the powerful and expressive form of filmmaking that is animation.

Other notable strands this year are Sounds of Zipangu, which is a development on the highly-popular music film selection from last year and notably includes two must-see films related to religion; Zipangu Experimental, featuring the wonderful visions of the likes of Takahiko Iimura, and Takashi Makino; and Nuclear Reactions, featuring haunting views on the issue of nuclear energy. There will also be a charity night on November 22nd at Café OTO in Dalston, featuring an excellent experimental programme from Kinema Nippon, and the famous experimental animation Cat Soup, which will be soundtracked live by the London-based premier noise-rock band Bo Ningen.

Confirmed guests for this year’s edition are Takashi Makino, whose experimental works will be shown both at Café OTO and the ICA, and Shinpei Takeda, director of Hiroshima Nagasaki Download.

Ultimately the aim of Zipangu Fest remains to bring the true creativity of Japanese filmmakers to light via rare or previously unseen gems of Japanese cinema, and to help bring tastes for Japanese cinema to the next level in the UK.

 

Admission:

Institute of Contemporary Arts : £10/£8 conc/£7 ICA member
Café OTO, Dalston : £5 (all proceeds to charity)