Film Screening: "Typhoon Club"

Typhoon Club is widely regarded as the seminal film of director Shinji Somai's career. A work of raw, elemental power, it follows an ensemble of junior high students in a provincial town, beset by a summer-y malaise as a typhoon looms. When the storm makes landfall, the teens find themselves holed up in their school unsupervised, while another classmate (Yuki Kudo) disappears alone on a harrowing trek to the big city. Set adrift in a world suddenly unmoored, the students let loose their pent-up angst and burgeoning passions in a series of propulsive, phantasmic scenes-part apocalypse, part utopia-as the deluge rages on into the night. The 10th best Japanese film of all time, according to Japan's Kinema Junpo poll.

--New 4K Restoration!

 

"I can say with absolute conviction that no Japanese filmmaker makes a film without being conscious of Shinji Somai's existence. That is how significant Somai's presence is in the history of Japanese cinema... For anyone who wants to see a movie that has the power to change and sustain your life, I urge you to see Somai's films." - Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of Drive My Car

"Maybe the last great master of Japanese film history." - Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Cure

"Shinji Somai is one of the most personal and original Japanese filmmakers, and a master whose work has been almost completely neglected outside Japan." - Chris Fujiwara, critic and programmer

"This is cinema." - Hou Hsiao-hsien

"One of the most beautiful and touching teenage films I've ever seen. An absolutely devastating film." - Bernardo Bertolucci

 

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