NFAJ: Women Who Made Japanese Cinema – Part 2

Marking an Era of Gradual Strides

Venue: National Film Archive of Japan
February 6 (Tue) - March 24 (Sun), 2024
Official website: www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/women202312/
Theater website: www.nfaj.go.jp/english/
Theater website: www.nfaj.go.jp/english/visit/access/
Tariff:  General: ¥520, Student/Senior: ¥310, Under 16: ¥100
Advance tickets: Find "チケット購入" on the schedule. https://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/women202312/#section1-3

Title: 日本の女性映画人（2） (Nippon no Josei Eigajin (2))

The National Film Archive of Japan (NFAJ) is following up on its groundbreaking 2023 celebration of Women Who Made Japanese Cinema Part 2 of the two-part series runs from February 6 – March 24, and focuses on female filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s. It was an era of great change in Japan’s film industry, especially in the realm of independent filmmaking, and more women were able to establish careers as screenwriters, directors and producers, as well as to pioneer new styles of expression. Among the 74 films and documentaries being shown, three of the works have English subtitles/narration, by documentary filmmaker Toshie Tokieda, and scriptwriters Tomomi Tsutsui and Sayoko Kinoshita. As always, we encourage you to explore the rest of the lineup.

Scriptwriter: Tomomi Tsutsui, 筒井ともみ

Tomomi Tsutsui worked as a studio musician, playing violin, before she turned to scriptwriting and never looked back. Over a long career, she has so far won awards for several TV dramas as well as three prestigious prizes for films by director Yoshimitsu Morita: the Kinema Junpo Screenplay Award for And Then (Sorekara,1985), the Japan Academy Prize for Best Screenplay for Lost Paradise (Shitsurakuen, 1997, starring Koji Yakusho of Perfect Days), and another Japan Academy Prize for Best Screenplay for Like Asura (Ashura no Gotoku, 2003). Tsutsui also wrote and produced Eating Woman (Taberu Onna, 2018), based on her own book.

Director: Toshie Tokieda, 時枝俊江

Toshie Tokieda (1929-2012) began her career working parttime at Nippon Eigasha, which had been formed through a merger of four large newsreel agencies, and joined Iwanami Productions in 1951. Under the guidance of Keiji Yoshino and Hisao Yanagisawa, she became a director in 1952 with Soil and Kiln Fertilizer. Iwanami, which produced some of the leading lights of documentary film history, including Susumu Hani, Shinsuke Ogawa, Noriaki Tsuchimoto and Kazuo Kuroki, specialized in educational documentaries and PR films. Soon, working alongside Sumiko Haneda, Tokieda would make early childhood education her lifework.

She went on to produce over 100 films on a range of subjects, including social education, travelogues and traditional culture, developing an innovative style that put sound on an equal footing with images. In 1967, she won the Mainichi Film Contest Educational and Cultural Film Award for The Land of Dawn, and the Art Festival Grand Prize and Kinema Junpo Best Cultural Film Award for Edo Life as Remembered in Drawings.

THIS IS TOKYO
March 13 (Wed), 2024 19:00
March 21 (Thu), 2024 13:00

Shown with Town Politics (1957) and In Search of a New Gas Source (1965)

Director: Nozomi Nagasaki, 長崎希

Nozomi Nagasaki studied under award-winning independent animator Tadanari Okamoto before starting her own company, N&G Production, where she produces, directs and creates animated films using a variety of materials. She also works on children's TV programs, commercials, video software, exposition films, and special effects for narrative films.

National Film Archive of Japan