JFLA provides high quality Japanese film screening every second and fourth Wednesday.
7:00pm at JFLA Auditorium (5700 Wilshire Blvd, #100, Los Angeles, CA 90036)
Free to attend. Reservation is not required.
Street Parking is available. https://www.jflalc.org/about-us#parking
A Day on the Planet (きょうのできごと)
Seven friends gather at Masamichi's (Shuji Kashiwabara) house in Kyoto, where he'll soon begin graduate studies. All of them college students; Nakazawa (Satoshi Tsumabuki), his adorable girlfriend Maki (Rena Tanaka), Nakazawa's best friend Keito (Ayumi Ito), insecure handsome guy Kawachi (Toshinobu Matsuo), the scruffy Nishiyama (Masaki Miura) and the seemingly detached Sakamoto (Atsushi Ishino).
Bottles are emptied, but the night is still young. Breaking news about a whale stranded on a beach and a man (Koji Okura) stuck between two buildings are broadcasted live on TV.
It is just another day in their lives, and yet so many things happen; short precious moments, fleeting thoughts, mundane events, unusual incidents, both trivial and significant, whether they're experienced in their hearts or in the real world around them.
The night slowly progresses and when they cross that hazy line between today and tomorrow, they find themselves greeted by the new morning of a new day.
(AsianWiki)
In Japanese with English subtitles
Tomoka Shibasaki was born in Osaka and began writing fiction while still in high school. After graduating from university, she took an office job but continued writing, managing to get onto the shortlist for the Bungei Prize in 1998. Publication in a magazine of her short story Reddo, Iero, Orenji, Buru (Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue) the following year marked her debut in print. Her first book, Kyo no dekigoto (A Day on the Planet, 2000), was turned into a hit movie, thrusting her into the limelight as an author. She is known for novels and stories that capture the sensibilities of young women living in cities. Winner of the Oda Sakunosuke Prize and the Noma New Writers' Award among others, she is the recipient of the 2014 Akutagawa Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Japan. Her books include Asleep or Awake (2010), Viridian (2011), and In the City Where I Was Not (2012).
Persona Non Grata (杉原千畝 スギハラチウネ)
Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara (Toshiaki Karasawa) hopes to be posted in the Soviet Union with using his mastery of the Russian language and intelligence but is denied entry into the country and is sent to Lithuania. In Kaunas, Lithuania, he continues gathering intelligence on European affairs with his Polish partner. In 1939 when Germany invades Poland and incites WWII, hordes of Jewish refugees oppressed by the Nazis turn to Sugihara for visas. With no approval from the Japanese government and despite putting career and family at great risk, Sugihara decides to start issuing transit visas to the refugees.
Handsomely mounted by Japanese-American director Cellin Gluck, this film is long overdue recognition of Japan’s Schindler, the only Japanese recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government and honored at Yad Vashem.
In Japanese with English subtitles