The New York Asian Film Festival is thundering to a close in these last days. Head into the weekend with a sci-fi epic from the great director Sion Sono (LOVE EXPOSURE) and a superhero action film featuring a perverse and outlandish costume design that is definitely something I personally have never seen before. I say that a lot with this festival, don’t I?
NYAFF is being presented by Subway Cinema (visit them here), and today’s screenings are taking place at the Japan Society (their site here).
Here are today’s screenings, with pictures & summaries courtesy of the festival:
BAD FILM
Friday, July 12, 6 PM
New York Premiere
Co-presented with The New York Asian Film Festival
In 1995, director Sion Sono and the performance collective Tokyo GAGAGA made this massive underground science fiction film about a gang war in Tokyo. They shot over 150 hours of footage but ran out of money during post-production. Now, almost 20 years later, Sono has finally finished the film!
In an alternate history 1997, Tokyo is a gangland war zone, divided between feuding factions from the Chinese Baihubang and the Japanese Kamikaze. The Kamikaze prowl the streets in a campaign bus, spewing vitriol from a loudspeaker; their leader is a bald lunatic whose only abiding passion is for a severed pig’s head he keeps in a plastic bag. The hyperactive narrator tells us that ancient race hatred is the war’s driving force. But when a Kamikaze girl meets a beautiful Chinese junk dealer, a lesbionic Romeo & Juliet story blossoms. Soon, they and the other closeted queers, freaks and cripples of the rival gangs band together to form a more perfect, omnisexual union. It appears that the years of old grudges and mutually assured destruction are at an end. Nothing could be stronger than love. Except hate.
Japan. 1995. 161 min. HD CAM, in Japanese and Mandarin with English subtitles. Directed by Sion Sono.
18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age and older.
HENTAI KAMEN: FORBIDDEN SUPER HERO
Friday, July 12, 9 PM
North American Premiere
Co-presented with the New York Asian Film Festival
Kyosuke (Ryuhei Suzuki) is the best member of his high school martial arts club, but when he indulges in his passion for wearing women’s underwear he becomes the panty-masked superhero Hentai Kamen. Based on a wildly popular manga series, Hentai Kamen may not be the hero we deserve, but he’s the hero we need.
Japan. 2013. 105 min. HD CAM, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yuichi Fukuda. With Ryohei Suzuki, Fumika Shimizu, Tsuyoshi Muro, Ken Yasuda, Nana Katase.
18+ This film is unrated, but may only be viewed by persons 18 years of age and older.
@jonnyabomb
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Tags: Asian Cinema, China, High School, japan, Jon Abrams, manga, martial arts, New York, Panty-Masks, Pigs, Romance, science fiction, Sion Sono, Superheroes, Underpants
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