Next up at the Clark

Anime for Grown-ups: The Art of Japanese Animation.

Saturdays at 1:00 pm in Japanese with subtitles
& at 3:00 pm in dubbed American version

Anime, as Japanese animation is usually called, is an immense presence in the culture of Japan, with global reach as well. The Clark will look at anime not from the perspective of genre expectations, but through the work of directors who speak in the international language of film. So -- no bodacious robot babes or cyberpunk gunslingers, but rather serious and wide-ranging exploration of character and theme in an influential graphic medium, a cinema of dreams replete with fantastic imagery. We’ll screen three films by different directors from Studio Ghibli, led by Hayao Miyazaki, and two films by a leading director of the next generation, Satoshi Kon.

November 1: Porco Rosso. (1992, 94 min., PG) A decade before he became a household name in America with an Oscar for Spirited Away, as well as other children’s favorites, Hayao Miyazaki directed this film explicitly for adults. Rather like Casablanca meets Only Angels Have Wings, it tells of a World War I flying ace, reduced to bounty hunting against air pirates over the Adriatic while the Fascists come to power in ’20s Italy -- and oh, incidentally, he’s turned into the Crimson Pig of the title.

November 8: Whisper of the Heart. (1995, 111 min., PG) Unlike Disney, Studio Ghibli is collaborative rather than corporate. For this thoroughly charming tale of adolescent romance and a bright young girl’s search for self, Miyazaki wrote the script but gave the direction to heir apparent Yoshifumi Kondo. Set in a realistic present, it is a testament to the expressive powers of rather simple animation, with brief fantasy interludes. If you liked Juno, you will love this winning story of a brash schoolgirl finding both a boyfriend and a calling in life.

November 15: Grave of the Fireflies. (1988, 88 min., PG-13) Directed by Isao Takahata, Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator, this sensitive, harrowing film depicts the impact of war on children, warranting comparison to all-time classic Forbidden Games. Two orphans, a boy and his younger sister, struggle for survival in the aftermath of the World War II firebombing of Japan, finding evanescent beauty in a terminal landscape. This sad and powerful masterpiece evokes the horror of war and the hope of humanity as well as any live-action film.

November 22: Tokyo Godfathers. (2004, 92 min., PG-13) Satoshi Kon has established himself as a younger director to watch, among those for whom animation is simply an expressive medium for serious films of all sorts. Here he transposes John Ford’s Western Three Godfathers to the underbelly of modern day Tokyo, with three tramps -- an alcoholic, a transvestite, and a teen runaway -- finding a baby on Christmas Eve, and encountering comic adventures in their heartwarming attempt to return the child to its mother.

November 29: Paprika. (2006, 90 min., R) Satoshi Kon delves into the sci-fi realm so common in anime, but with a distinctive bent, adapting a (non-graphic) novel obsessed with psychoanalysis and the meaning of dreams. Paprika is the therapeutic avatar of a powerful woman psychiatrist, partnered with a blubbery nerd genius who has invented a machine that allows physical entry into the dreams of subjects, a dangerous weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous and power-mad. This may be the boldest popular exploration of dream imagery since Hitchcock’s Spellbound.