House

November 20, 2015
past event image
Film past event

Introduction and Q&A with Nobuhiko Obayashi. Followed by the Hausu Party.
 
SOLD OUT. A wait list will begin at the Box Office starting at 6 PM.

Hoping for something wild to electrify a Japanese cinema that had hit the doldrums, Toho gave newcomer Nobuhiko Obayashi free reign to make something no one had seen before. And he did. Ostensibly a horror film about a girl who brings her friends to her aunt’s house, only to see them killed, one by one, by possessed household furniture and appliances, House often plunges into parody, while also demonstrating all the tricks that were possible with celluloid which we in the digital age have forgotten. Obayashi’s debut film vigorously proclaimed his name at home and eventually abroad, but it was also a marvelous sign of what was to come.
 
1977, 88 min., 35mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. With Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Oba, Ai Matsubara, Mieko Sato, Eriko Tanaka, Masayo Miyako.

 
"Delirious, deranged, gonzo or just gone, baby, gone–no single adjective or even a pileup does justice to House."
–Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Preceded by
Complexe
One of the monuments in the history of Japanese experimental film, Complexe actually shares much with Obayashi’s later commercial work: a delightful play with film form (slow motion, animation using human figures, freeze frames, etc.), a consciousness of the camera, a charming mix of pop genres and European art cinema, and a nostalgic, if not Romanticist tone.

1964, 14 min., 16mm, tinted b/w, silent.

Part of Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Retrospective.

Tickets: $15/$12 Japan Society members, seniors & students

Box Office Policy

  • Friday, November 20, 2015
  • 7:00 pm