Japanese Cinema Eclectics日本映画撰集

A Multipart Series Devoted to Unexplored Tangents of the Japanese Film
Introduction and Q&A by Donald Richie in English (Film in Japanese with English subtitles), Curator: Donald Richie
Film: Distance (2001) Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda

Beauty & Light Exhibition photographs by Pascal d'Aboyer & Morgan Fisher (6/10〜25) at SuperDeluxe



Japanese Cinema Eclectics official site

About the "Distance"
It is the third anniversary of the poisoning of the Tokyo water system (123 dead, 8000 made ill) by a group called The Ark of Truth. We follow a small group of people to the distant scene where the members later committed suicide. These, we think, are family of the victims, but they are not. They are family members of the perpetrators. Based on the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo gas attacks in Tokyo, this film (by the director of Maboroshi, After life, and Nobody Knows) attempts to comprehend an event that is incomprehensible. We do not know when our right to worship, to believe, crosses into blind acceptance and insanity. Through images of the puzzling present and unreliable flashbacks of the past we endure this dark, dense, and disturbing chronicle in order to come to terms with – finally – ourselves.

About Donald Richie

This monthly series will feature relatively unknown but important Japanese avant garde films selected by Donald Richie, the former Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art in New York (1969-1973), and a renowned authority on Japanese film. Donald Richie came to Japan in 1947 as feature writer for the Pacific Stars and Stripes. After the end of the Occupation, he became film critic for The Japan Times and still continues with that paper as Arts Critic. During the following years he wrote a number of books, including The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965); Ozu (1974), and One Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2002). In addition, he has written over forty books about the country in which he has been resident for nearly sixty years. These include: The Inland Sea (1971), Japanese Portraits (1991), and his latest work, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004.


Presented by the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies
Temple University, Japan Campus
in Association with SuperDeluxe

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Beauty & Light

A joint photograph exhibition by Pascal d'Aboyer & Morgan Fisher
June 10-25 2009, evenings.



Live performance by Morgan Fisher on June 10 & 25 (free entry)

Please see SuperDeluxe calender for more detailed information.

Artist info:

Pascal d'Aboyer/BEAUTY

"Those who most often express appreciation of my work with women are women. I like to think that this fact gives my work legitimacy."

Morgan Fisher/LIGHT

"My Light Paintings are created by taking long exposures while moving the camera like a brush in front of various natural and man-maid light sources. I feel they have the same spontaneous quality as my musical performance."