Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Conversation at Japan Cuts 2020

As mentioned in my��last post, I���m still quarantining in Japan. But I wanted to let everyone know about a panel discussion I did on the��work of the late filmmaker Obayashi Nobuhiko for this year���s edition of��Japan Cuts. We recorded it on June 23 and it will go live online starting on July 17��here.��

As anyone who���s read this blog knows, my relationship with Obayashi��goes back many years, beginning with simply watching him as a spectator until I finally met him in 2014. We hosted him at Yale in 2015, immediately after��which the Japan Society ran an Obayashi retrospective that I programmed. I was even��honored to write a short contribution to a book that Obayashi published. When he passed away in April this year, after his long battle with cancer, I wrote��up a remembrance that, while still quite feeble, hopefully gives a sense of what Obayashi meant to me and to my family.

In late May, Kazu Watanabe of the Japan Society contacted me about the possibility of moderating a panel on Obayashi for this year���s��Japan Cuts, which due to COVID-19 was going online this year. Japan Cuts was not only going to be showing Obayashi���s last film, Labyrinth of Cinema, along with a documentary on Obayashi and his wife/producer Kyoko, it was creating a new award for its Next Generation section named after Obayashi. Kazu explained that the festival wanted to hold some form of commemorative event on Obayashi that would be online.