A small round up of random February film news for all you good people. Let's start with a reminder that the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme has started and will be touring the country for the rest of the month and into March. It just so happens that we've already reviewed a few of the films such as Teki Cometh, Angry Squad and Ghost Killer (with more reviews to come). Full listings can be found here.
Radiance have announced Aesthetics of a Bullet as part of their May slate of releases. A yakuza gang selects a good-for-nothing street vendor to stir up trouble in enemy territory. With a flashy suit, a gun and a pocketful of money, he feels like a king but when trouble comes knocking, he realises that waving a gun and pulling the trigger are two very different things. After the major studios refused to finance it, director Sadao Nakajima (The Japanese Godfather Trilogy - out this month from Radiance) took this project to New Wave bastion the Art Theatre Guild. With a deeply impressive performance by Tsunehiko Watase (Sympathy for the Underdog) that predates Robert DeNiro’s indelible turn as Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver by three years, Aesthetics of a Bullet is a lost gem of 1970s Japanese cinema ripe for rediscovery.
An intriguing one off, those silent cinema fans in London will no doubt be followers of The Kennington Bioscope, who on the 25th of this month are showing Mikio Naruse's earliest extant film, No Blood Relation, at the Cinema Museum in Kennington. A late silent film, like all KB films it will be presented with live piano accompaniment and preceded with a series of short films. Only £8 for entry and tickets available on the day (always advised to book), also an opportunity to poke around the Cinema Museum itself, a once Victorian workhouse where a certain British actor, director, one Charlie Chaplin found himself as a young man. Details available here.
Finally, the BFI Flare festival has a rare screening of Impure Nuns. Tickets available soon, and the film showing in March. This transgressive 1950s treasure, previously unseen outside of Japan, chronicles an affair between two nuns at a boarding school.
