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Heaven and Earth Magic (Nightingale Cinema, November) This year’s Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation featured an impressive mix of new and old works. A standout in the latter category was this feature-length collage animation by Harry Smith (1961), which screened from a 16-millimeter print. Seeing the movie in this format was significant, as Smith communicated so much through the texture of his images.
- An Inn in Tokyo
An Inn in Tokyo (Music Box, May) Though it centers on the character of Kihachi, the beloved ne’er-do-well of Yasujiro Ozu’s Passing Fancy and A Story of Floating Weeds, this 1935 silent isn’t as well-known here as either of those films. That might explain why attendance was lower than usual for this screening in the Music Box’s Second Saturday Silent Cinema series, which usually draws a decent crowd. As I wrote in anticipation of the screening, the Kihachi movies, with their mix of humor and pathos, reveal what a strong influence Chaplin’s filmmaking had on Ozu’s.
