On Sunday, April 23rd, 2017, moonbow cinema hosted 6th event featuring Dolls (*1) directed by Takeshi Kitano at Asakusa Public Hall (*2). 

 I chose Dolls based on my experience at Sundance Film Festival (*3)  in January that year. By witnessing a Japanese short film And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool (*4) directed by Makoto Nagahisa winning Short Film Grand Jury Prize, I thought of a summer in Japan from a foreign country in the middle of winter. This experience gave me an idea to show a Japanese film at moonbow cinema for the first time. The next event is scheduled in spring. Dolls is the first choice as a story with images of four seasons in Japan.

Dolls begins with the performance of The Courier for Hell (*5) , a traditional Japanese puppet play written by Monzaemon Chikamatsu. Then the story follows two vagabonds, a man who betrayed his fiancee by a pressure from his parents and employer and a woman who was betrayed. They walk from cherry blossoms in full bloom to snowy winter mountain by connecting themselves by string. A man is performed by Hidetoshi Nishijima and a woman is by Miho Kanno. Costume designed by Yoji Yamamoto.

To look for a screening location, I focused on Asakusa area. In addition to the fact that Kitano built his career at Asakusa, the model of vagabonds existed there. Kitano told at an interview that when he worked at Asakusa as an elevator boy, he saw a couple called connected vagabonds walking a same route every day. My hope was that attendees of moonbow cinema will join the journey on the screen by positioning themselves closer to main characters by being at the birthplace of vagabonds.

The Asakusa Public Hall is next to Senso-ji. The main hall is with Hamamichi, a special route from a main stage for Kabuki, with 1,082 seats. There are smaller spaces available for rent, too. One of them is a Japanese style room with wooden floor used for Japanese traditional dancing lessons. To see a movie, guests take their shoes off to enter the room and sit on Japanese cushion mat, Zabuton. I decided to host a screening in this room because it seemed a perfect fit to the film opening with Japanese historical puppet play. To make the place comfortable for two hours of screening, I set low table in front of Zabuton so that guests can lean on and put two Zabuton per person.

Dolls is a film to highlight a beauty of nature by contrasting with human’s stupidity and sorrowful. I am curious how attendees who experienced the film in the evening of spring see nature and humanity after the event.

The next 7th moonbow cinema was held in summer. I looked for a setting to feel cool air. (To be continued.)