DYLAN FIELDS WRITES – This weekend the Japan Film Society hosts the 4th annual Los Angeles EigaFest, showcasing contemporary Japanese cinema in the US.
A portmanteau of the Japanese word for film (eiga) and ‘festival,’ the name signifies its objectives to “showcase Japanese and Japanese-influenced films that appeal to the broad American audiences, introduce and promote new and upcoming filmmakers and talent to the Hollywood community, and enhance the communication and relationship between the US and Japanese film industries and thus create business opportunities.”
The original EigaFest was held at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 2011. Since then, JFS has used EigaFest to host hit films such as Takashi Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children, Lee Sang-il’s Unforgiven, and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises.
EigaFest is once again ready to debut a number of amazing films, including two of the most anticipated Japanese films of the year: Ryuuhei Kitamura’s live-action adaptation of Monkey Punch’s classic action-comedy manga Lupin the Third, as well as Keishi Otomo’s Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno, the sequel to the acclaimed 2012 live-action adaptation of Nobuhiro Watsuki’s legendary samurai manga. The original Rurouni Kenshin movie also debuted in the US at 2012’s EigaFest.
JFS continues to raise the bar by debuting great Japanese films to an appreciative U.S. audience. Asia Media International will provide coverage of EigaFest during the weekend it premieres. For more information on EigaFest and the films it will showcase, visit their website at laeigafest.com.