SF Cinematheque in association with the Intersection for the Arts presents:
Fragile Memories: Images of Japan
Thursday, October 25, 2012, 19:30h
Artists' Television Access
992 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Ute Aurand In Person

September 3–November 3, Intersection for the Arts presents Lost and Found: Family Photos Swept by 3.11 East Japan Tsunami, a massive display of personal photographs recovered in the city of Yamomoto during post-tsunami clean-up in 2011, collectively displayed in an overwhelming testament to loss and perseverance. In homage and reference to this exhibition Cinematheque tonight screens Ute Aurand’s 2011 film Young Pines (Junge Kiefern), an engaged, stately and patient observance of the urban landscape, a quiet consideration on harmonious overlap between nature and culture. Filmed throughout Japan before the disasters of the tsunami and Fukushima, but edited after, Young Pines’ carries an uncanny and inspiring grace. Also screening are three recent films by Japanese filmmakers which consider similar themes, including Tomonari Nishikawa’s Tokyo—Ebisu a fragmented collage of that vibrant city’s life and motion; Makino Takashi’s Generator (with a soundtrack by Jim O’Rourke), a study in accumulation and dissolution, which, created as a response to the disaster in Fukushima, visualizes Tokyo in a toxic state of decay; and Rei Hayama’s Emblem, a quiet meditation on the fragility of landscape and life. (Steve Polta)