| 8:45 p.m. | Dream Girls Kim Longinotto, Jano Williams (U.K., 1993) |
Kim Longinotto in Person
Dream Girls is a fascinating portrait of the Takarazuka Music School and Theater in Japan, whose shows rival Las Vegas for glitter and Hollywood for romance. What makes female audiences buy tickets months in advance is the perfection of the fantasy offered by Takarazuka's men—because they are all played by women. Dream Girls follows the routine at this much-sought-after school where the focus is on training—dance, voice, and discipline for its own sake. After two years on stage, stars and chorines alike return to society, where men are coarse and, it is said, women who have been men at the Takarazuka make better wives.
—Judy Bloch
• (50 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 16mm, From Women Make Movies)
Followed by:
The Good Wife of Tokyo
Kim Longinotto, Claire Hunt (U.K., 1993)
"We are ninjas we are not geishas," proclaims the three-woman British rock band Frank Chickens, performing in Tokyo. Their leader, Kazuko Hohki, has come home to interview women, young and old, about life in Japan today—and to marry, to please her mother. This kind of paradox is central to The Good Wife of Tokyo, a beautiful study of the contradictions of family life for women in Japan. Kazuko's mother is a priest in the religion known as House of Development, which draws middle-aged women to its creed of laughter and faith, and draws them out in frank discussions. One woman's difficult mother-in-law lived to be 100, another tells of her husband's suicide and apologizes for the inconvenience . . . classic stuff. But change is in the air in a new women's culture.—Judy Bloch
• (52 mins, In English and Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 16mm, From Women Make Movies)
• (Total running time: 102 mins)
