Running It Back, Finding a New Way Forward: Japanese Film 2011-2020

Co-organized by the Japan Foundation and Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens

In this panel, Matthieu Felt and Christopher Smith contextualize selections from this year’s festival within the history of post 3/11 Japan and trends in recent Japanese Cinema. Matthieu Felt highlights the theme of returning to the past, either directly, through a medium, through interpersonal relations, or through the director’s filmography. In this year’s festival selections, esteemed old hands like Nakata Hideo (The Ring) and Suo Masayuki (Shall We Dance?) go to the well one more time, while younger talents like Ando Momoko, Okita Shūichi, Imaizumi Rikiya, and Shiraishi Kazuya experiment with new twists on memory, trauma, and form. Christopher Smith discusses Japanese animation, as well as highlighting films that share the theme of finding a place in society while still embracing one’s eccentricities among films by Ooku Akiko, Suo Masayuki, and Yaguchi Shinobu.


Matthieu Felt teaches Japanese literature and culture at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2017. His research analyzes the changing interpretations of Japanese mythology in premodern and modern Japan.

Christopher Smith teaches modern Japanese literature and popular culture at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hawai’i in 2017. His research examines how literature and culture represents, manipulates, and ultimately plays with Japanese history, examined through the lenses of nationalism, national identity, the historical legitimation of power, and postmodernism.



JFF Plus Website: https://watch.jff.jpf.go.jp


Virtual Lectures:

Transforming the World - How Japanese Robots Saved a Nation and Charmed a Planet
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transfor...

Images of Nature - Cultural Representations inJapanese Film
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/images-o...


Family Friendly Activities:

Origami Fox Tutorial:    • Fox Origami  

Japanese Snowman Tutorial: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vRg0...

Tsukimi Chigiri-e:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C6Es...