Nippon Connection comes back to the cinema! After the successful online film festival in June with over 22,700 viewers, the Japanese film festival Nippon Connection is bringing its Nippon Retro section back to the cinema in two parts starting in August. This year's retrospective is dedicated to Kinuyo Tanaka (1909-1977), successful actress and one of the first female directors in Japanese cinema. From August 3 to 21, 2021, Tanaka's acting will take center stage. At the cinema of the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main, Nippon Connection will present seven outstanding works featuring her, including films by Yasujiro Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi, as well as the late work Sandakan No. 8 (1974) by Kei Kumai, for which Tanaka received the Berlinale Silver Bear, among other awards. The second part of the retrospective in fall 2021 will feature four of her rarely screened directorial works. The retrospective takes place in cooperation with Japanisches Kulturinstitut Köln (The Japan Foundation) and DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum.
The films will be shown in the original Japanese version with English subtitles on analog 16mm and 35mm film prints from the archives of The Japan Foundation in Tokyo. Members of the festival team will give a short introduction before selected films.
