Event Announcement: JSNO Japanese Cinema Series Screening: "P.P. RIDER" (1983) by Shinji Somai, Fri, December 1, 2023

EVENT DETAILS:

Zeitgeist is screening two 80s Japanese films over the next two weeks.

• Date: Beginning Friday, December 1st, screening daily
• Time: Doors open @ 6:30pm, Screening starts @ 7:00pm
• Place: Zeitgeist, 6621 St. Claude Ave, Arabi, LA 70032
• Cost: $10 general / $9 students or seniors / $8 Zeitgeist Members or children 16 and under.

Movie Summary: 

P.P. RIDER (1983) by Shinji Somai
An exuberant farce tinted with deep shades of melancholy and real violence, P.P. RIDER is an ode to the dreams of youth against authority. The film centers on three teens on a burlesque odyssey to rescue their kidnapped class bully from a gang of yakuza. En route they run afoul of some cops, befriend a motley former gangster, and experience the first seismic shocks of growing up. More immediately, the youngsters climb on things and jostle and fall down and sing and take up space, carried along less by the search for their classmate than by the sheer momentum of being young and alive. Director Shinji Somai constantly invents astonishing new ways to capture their movements, including a mythic opening shot, which—according to legend—required the use of three cranes. Adapted from a comic strip-like scenario by Leonard and Chieko Schrader, it’s a film of unparalleled freedom, and a testament to Somai’s ability to inject his work with the potent marrow of life.

TWO “NEW OLD” FILMS BY SHINJI SOMAI:  Widely lauded in his native Japan, director Shinji Somai (1948-2001) remains largely unknown in the West.  A pioneering filmmaker who directed some of the era’s most original and enduring works, five of which comprise Kinema Junpo’s critics list for the best Japanese films of all time.  Somai’s potent evocation of adolescence has heavily influenced filmmakers from Shunji Iwai and Shinji Aoyama to Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Now, after more than 20 years since Somai’s untimely death at the age of 53, these two films, P.P. RIDER and TYPHOON CLUB have been restored and are being released for the first time theatrically in the U.S.