Screen/Society--"Typhoon Club" (Shinji Somâi, 1985)

Film screening:

"Typhoon Club"
(Shinji Somâi, 1985, 108 min, Japan, Japanese with English subtitles, DCP)

--New 4K Restoration!

Typhoon Club is widely regarded as the seminal film of director Shinji Somai's career. A work of raw, elemental power, it follows an ensemble of junior high students in a provincial town, beset by a summer-y malaise as a typhoon looms. When the storm makes landfall, the teens find themselves holed up in their school unsupervised, while another classmate (Yuki Kudo) disappears alone on a harrowing trek to the big city. Set adrift in a world suddenly unmoored, the students let loose their pent-up angst and burgeoning passions in a series of propulsive, phantasmic scenes-part apocalypse, part utopia-as the deluge rages on into the night. The 10th best Japanese film of all time, according to Japan's Kinema Junpo poll.

"I can say with absolute conviction that no Japanese filmmaker makes a film without being conscious of Shinji Somai's existence. That is how significant Somai's presence is in the history of Japanese cinema... For anyone who wants to see a movie that has the power to change and sustain your life, I urge you to see Somai's films." - Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of Drive My Car

"Maybe the last great master of Japanese film history." - Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Cure

"Shinji Somai is one of the most personal and original Japanese filmmakers, and a master whose work has been almost completely neglected outside Japan." - Chris Fujiwara, critic and programmer

"This is cinema." - Hou Hsiao-hsien

"One of the most beautiful and touching teenage films I've ever seen. An absolutely devastating film." - Bernardo Bertolucci

View trailer: https://vimeo.com/848720926

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