SUPER LOCAL HERO

Celebrating a Tireless Do-Gooder

Venue(s): K's Cinema Shinjuku
March 28 (Sat) to April 3 (Fri), 2015 11:00 am
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: superlocalhero.com/en/
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtzJgNMe6sA
Tariff: General: ￥1,500/Student: ￥1,300/Senior: ￥1,000
Advance tickets: ￥1,000 purchase before March 20

Title: スーパー ローカル ヒーロー (Supaa Rokaru Hiiro)
Director: Toshinori Tanaka (田中トシノリ)
Duration: 91 min

You’ve probably never heard of Katsuhiko Nobue, and that’s why the word “local” is necessary in the title of this film. Nobue runs Reikodo, a quaint CD shop just behind Onomichi railway station in Hiroshima. But “CD shop” doesn’t do it justice. Along with the music, much of it by indie-label artists, the sunlit shop is also filled with organic vegetables, fermented juice, magazines, killifish, plants and a napping cat. Nobue himself is often too busy to tend the till, going about numerous odd jobs he works to pay the piper, as well as organizing an antinuclear event or a concert, or helping someone in need.

London-trained filmmaker Toshinori Tanaka follows this Super Local Hero around his hometown, turning the lens on those whose lives he touches and enriches, especially the musicians and children who revere him. If we’re lucky, we may know someone like Katsuhiko Nobue ourselves, and this documentary tribute will remind us, fondly, of that selfless local hero who barely scrapes by but never stops helping others.

Critic Don Brown reminds us:

Movie buffs overseas will know [Onomichi] mainly as the hometown of the neglected grandparents in Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, but middle-aged Japanese are probably more likely to associate it with local-boy-made-good Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Onomichi Trilogy of classic 1980s coming-of-age films: Exchange Students, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Lonely Heart.”

Link to Don Brown’s full review.

K’s Cinema Shinjuku: