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Thursday, July 30, 2020

2013 animated film Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ) online at Row House Cinema, part of Japanese Film Week, from July 31.



The 2013 animated film Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ) will play online at Row House Cinema as part of Japanese Film Week from July 31. From a 2014 New York Times review:
An orphaned girl and a fatherless boy bridge opposing societies in “Patema Inverted,” a delightful animated fable from Yasuhiro Yoshiura.

When a scientific experiment goes awry, the laws of physics go nuts, and a subset of humans is forced underground, where gravity has been reversed. In this inverted world of tunnels and caverns, the sky is a terrifying blue-and-white hole for the unwary — like the 14-year-old Patema — to fall into.

Meanwhile, on the surface, young Age and his school friends aren’t faring much better under a totalitarian regime that forbids them to look toward the heavens.

Similar to Juan Solanas’s little-seen 2013 love story, “Upside Down,” this “Can we get along?” movie literalizes a physical attraction that acts as a counterargument to the divided worlds’ insistence on separation.
Ticket information is coming soon. Two other films comprise Japanese Film Week, which actually runs two weeks through August 13: A Girl Missing (よこがお) and We Are Little Zombies (ウィーアーリトルゾンビーズ) , both from 2019.