THURSDAY EVENINGS
JULY 2, 9, 16, 23
+ SUNDAY MATINEE
JULY 5

The Powell Street Festival Society and Pacific Cinémathèque are pleased to present the second edition of “Kibatsu Cinema,” a five-day celebration of the odd and the eccentric in Japanese pop culture and contemporary Japanese film. Kibatsu is a Japanese word denoting a person or thing that is, by ordinary standards, unusual or unconventional. As with our first “Kibatsu Cinema” program in 2007, the quirky, smart, and stylish films on display here reveal the influences of a variety of Japan’s prominent pop-cultural streams, including anime, pop and underground music. Two of the films focus on influential and unique contemporary Japanese visual artists.

The series opens with Megane, director Naoko Ogigami’s much-anticipated follow-up to the cult favourite and critically acclaimed Kamome Diner (also screening in this year’s program). The line-up also includes Funky Forest, a hilarious and bizarre trip to other worlds co-directed by Katsuhito Ishii (The Taste of Tea); Adrift in Tokyo, by director Miki Satoshi; and Yayoi Kusama: I Love ME and Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara, exceptional documentaries on two very different yet equally compelling visual artists.

There’s also an animated entry, but, in keeping with our unconventional or non-traditional theme, we feature a stop-motion animated film rather than the anime typically associated with the Japanese animation industry. Komaneko: the Curious Cat, screening as a Sunday matinee on July 5, is an adorable and child-friendly movie that is also clever enough for adult audiences. Making up for the absence of more “mature” anime films in the rest of the program is the fact that several of the festival’s features contain wonderful animated sequences.

Fresh, fun and original, full of the beauty — and, often, the insanity — of everyday life, these provocative works have a knack for turning the uneventful into the resonant, the highly odd into the endearing, the over-the-top into the poignant. More than half the films in the schedule have never before screened in Vancouver.

Acknowledgments: “Kibatsu Cinema” was programmed for the Powell Street Festival Society by Miko Hoffman. Special thanks to Yuuki Hirano; Atsuko Yamashita; Jim Sinclair, Steve Chow, Jessica Parsons and everyone at Pacific Cinémathèque; Kristen Lambertson and Sabrina Mehra at Powell Street Festival Society; and our community sponsors.

The Powell Street Festival Society gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, the B.C. Arts Council, The Japan Foundation, and the City of Vancouver’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

Visit the Powell Street Festival! Kibatsu Cinema: eccentricity, popular culture and contemporary Japanese film is a lead-up event to Vancouver’s 33rd annual Powell Street Festival, a celebration of Japanese Canadian arts, culture and heritage. Festival weekend is August 1-2, 2009. This year’s festival has been temporarily relocated to Woodland Park at 700 Woodland Drive (Woodland and Adanac, just east of Clark and south of Hastings). Visit www.powellstreetfestival.com for complete festival info.