Theater of the Matters Presents: Gassan + Woman of Tokyo

At the twilight of his life, a man spends the winter in a village at the foot of Mount Gassan, a holy site venerated for millennia. Finding refuge in a snow-buried temple, he has a mystical experience on the frontiers of the living and the dead. The Theater of the Matters is proud to present the first US screening of Shinji Somai’s rare and deeply personal final film, completed shortly before the director’s death from cancer in 2001. Produced as an installment in “Reading Journey: Masterpieces of Japan,” an experimental public television program, Gassan is a marvel of spare means: shot on location in just four days with an HD camera, one performer, and a small crew. In a series of intricately orchestrated long takes, actor Akira Emoto recites the text of the eponymous 1974 novel by Atsushi Mori, a fictionalized account of the writer’s travels in remote Northern Japan, suffused with the region’s language and folk traditions. Gassan will be followed by a 35mm screening of Woman of Tokyo, a furious, oblique Depression-era silent film by Somai favorite Yasujiro Ozu, presented without accompaniment.

Gassan (2001)
Dir. Shinji Somai
With Akira Emoto
52min; Digital

In Japanese with English subtitles

Woman of Tokyo (1933)
Dir. Yasujiro Ozu
With Yoshiko Okada, Ureo Egawa
45min; 35mm

In Japanese intertitles with English subtitles