Free Japanese Film Screenings at BLOOR CINEMA

SPECIAL PRESENTATION
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The Japan Foundation presents four free screenings of contemporary Japanese films at the Bloor Cinema. Please visit our website for more information.

Films:
THE STARS CONVERGE - Wednesday, December 9 at 7:00 PM
WOMEN IN THE MIRROR - Thursday, December 10 at 7:00 PM
THE MILK WOMAN - Saturday, December 12 at 7:00 PM
DOG IN A SIDECAR - Sunday, December 13 at 4:30 PM

Location:
Bloor Cinema
506 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON
416-516-2331
www.bloorcinema.com

Admission: FREE! No RSVP required.



Wednesday, December 9, 7:00 PM
THE STARS CONVERGE
(Japanese title: Chirusoku no Natsu)
2003, 114 min, 14A
Dir: Kiyoshi Sasabe
Starring: Yuri Mizutani, Junpei, Juri Ueno, Asami Katsura, Takayo Mimura
In Japanese with English Subtitles

In l977 in the port city of Shimonoseki , Ikuko (Mizutani) enters a track and field meet being held as a goodwill event with South Korean sister city Pusan . There she meets and falls in love with An Tei Hou (Junpei), a South Korean boy. A year later, on the day of the Tanabata festival (known as ''Chirusoku" in Korean), the young lovers are reunited and vow to meet again in four years time. Some twenty-six years later, Ikuko has become a high school P.E. teacher and fondly remembers her youthful love affair. The track and field event she competed in has not been held since the onset of Japan ’s economic recession, but is to be revived this year. Ikuko participates as a coach, while An is an anonymous sponsor. At last, they are able to fulfill their promise to meet again. Sasabe Kiyoshi (Half a Confession) directs this nostalgic cross-culture love story that resonates with popular songs from the late 1970s.




Thursday, December 10, 7:00 PM
WOMEN IN THE MIRROR
(Japanese title: Kagami no Onnatachi)
2002, 129 min, 14A
Dir: Yoshishige Yoshida
Starring: Mariko Okada, Yoshiko Tanaka, Sae Isshiki
In Japanese with English Subtitles

Ai has been looking for her daughter Miwa, who disappeared 24 years ago, leaving her infant daughter in Ai’s care. One day she meets a woman in possession of Miwa's maternity passbook. However, the woman, who calls herself Masako, is afflicted by amnesia, and after 24 years, Ai is not able to judge whether the woman is her daughter or not. Masako recommends conducting a DNA analysis, but Ai rejects her offer and suggests they live together as a family. However, Ai's granddaughter Natsuki, whom Masako left to in Ai's care all those years earlier, is not able to hide her confusion at Masako's sudden arrival. An intergenerational drama from director Yoshida, who was part of the Japanese New Wave.




Saturday, December 12, 7:00 PM
THE MILK WOMAN
(Japanese title: Itsuka Dokusho Suru Hi)
2005, 127 min, PG
Dir: Akira Ogata
Starring: Yuko Tanaka, Den Fujita
In Japanese with English Subtitles

Minako, 50 and single, begins her day running up and down the steep hills of her home town delivering milk, after which she goes to her job as a supermarket cashier. In one of the houses to which she delivers milk lives a man with whom she has secretly been in love since high school. That man, Keita, lives with his terminally ill wife. Caring for her at home, he works in the Children’s Affairs Section of the local municipal office. Although he wants nothing more than an ordinary existence, his life is one of constant turmoil. Eventually great change comes to their ‘ordinary’ lives, and the loves of Minako and Keita, and those of the people living around them, rise and fall with the hills of the town.




Sunday, December 13, 4:30 PM
DOG IN A SIDECAR
(Japanese title: Saidoka ni Inu)
2007, 94 min, 14A
Dir: Kichitaro Negishi
Starring: Yuko Takeuchi, Arata Furuta, Kana Matsumoto
In Japanese with English Subtitles

Kaoru, unhappy in her personal life and job as a real estate agent, flashes back to the summer she was 10 years old, when her flighty father (Furuta) quit his job to become a used car dealer (with some help from the yakuza), her straight-laced mother walked out, and her father’s free-spirited mistress Yoko (Takeuchi, in an award-winning turn) showed up at the door. Kaoru, as by-the-books as her mother, is reluctant to embrace Yoko’s unconventional and rebellious perspective, but as the two bond over shared adventures, she realizes they have more in common than she expected.

Supported by the Consulate-General of Japan in Toronto