"What the Snow Brings” 2005

Japanese Film Festival
“The Harimaya Bridge,” Sat., March 6; “Tokyo Sonata,” March 13; “What the Snow Brings,” March 20.
All films are $7 ($6 students, senior citizens and High Museum members) and begin at 8 p.m. Rich Theatre in the Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4115, www.woodruffcenter.org.

By Bob Townsend

When “The Harimaya Bridge” opens the High Museum of Art’s Japanese Film Festival on Saturday, it will be a rare opportunity for Atlanta moviegoers to catch a glimpse of the current state of the art of Japanese cinema.

“With the sad state of foreign film distribution these days, it’s hard to see a lot of films from Japan, other than the anime titles that seem to have a solid fan base here,” said Linda Dubler, curator of media arts at the High.

The festival runs three consecutive Saturday evenings this month, with a trio of films Dubler said “explore the complexities of family relationships as well as the conflicts that arise when modernity collides with tradition.”

The festival is co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan in Atlanta. The consulate’s adviser for educational and cultural affairs, Jessica Kennett Cork, worked with Dubler to select the films for the festival.

“The Harimaya Bridge,” a semiautobiographical 2009 film from American writer-director Aaron Woolfolk, stars Ben Guillory, Saki Takaoka, Misa Shimizu and Danny Glover. It’s a particularly interesting selection because of Woolfolk’s experience in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, Cork said.

“The film is Woolfolk’s first feature film,” said Cork. “What we liked about it is the antithesis to the typical portrayal of Japan by Hollywood directors. It truly shows the real Japan, not the romanticized samurai-geisha Japan nor the dazzling metropolitan Japan, but the real lives of real people who live in the Japanese countryside.

“Woolfolk is also the first African-American director to make a film in Japan, and his film brings up many issues not often discussed publicly in Japan, much less in a film, such as lingering animosity over World War II, marriage between Japanese and foreigners, and discrimination.”

“Tokyo Sonata,” the 2008 film from acclaimed director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, premieres March 13. Arguably the most challenging and provocative film in the series, it follows a contemporary Japanese family caught in a weird web of secrets and lies.

“It’s really wild,” Dubler said. “It doesn’t follow any genre conventions, and it becomes stranger and more surprising with every turn. The story of a father who loses his job but withholds that information and continues to leave every morning as if going off to work has been treated in other films. ‘Tokyo Sonata’ takes the thread of secrecy in the father’s behavior and sews it like a mutant seed into the behavior of all of the family members.”

The festival closes March 20 with director Kichitaro Negishi’s “What the Snow Brings” from 2005. It’s much more traditional than “Tokyo Sonata.” But it’s the most visually stunning of the three films in the series, exploring family conflicts against the wintry backdrop of a unique Japanese style of horse racing.

“It deals with classic Japanese themes of family and honor in a contemporary way,” said Dubler. “The context of Banei horse racing is very particular to the region, but the framework of a sports movie is familiar to American audiences. And the theme of brothers who become estranged when one asserts his individuality while the other shoulders the responsibility of family is also universal.”