The Japanese Paper Film Project

Also from Florida. Also remember those guys.

Great exercise that I plan to steal for my quantitative film analysis class!

Our scanning system is super gentle on the films. But some films need repairs before scanning. _Monkey & Tanuki_ was so brittle that it fell apart at the slightest touch. Owner Yo Sato-sensei generously let us bring it to Bucknell for repairs. Enjoy the time lapse (4-hour surgery!) & final result!

Thanks for your kind words! The MoMA screening was super special and we were grateful to be included.

Like others, THE LIMEY, but also BARAKA or RUN LOLA RUN.

"Silver Comes Through" is a 1927 Hollywood film that made its way to Japan & then copied to paper in the 1930s. The original 35mm film is lost thus making the paper copy some of the film's only surviving footage. Star Fred Thomson is largely forgotten now because so few of his films were preserved.

Our next show will be Jan. 31st at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the "To Save and Project" festival. A big "thank you" to Dan Streible for including Japanese paper films in the @orphanfilms at MoMA program. As usual, Duo Yumeno will provide live musical accompaniment.

Thanks for your kind words!

A great show in Sydney! Plus koala! Thank you Art Gallery of NSW and Japan Foundation (japanesefilmfestival.net) for helping turn out the audience for this sold out event. Melbourne is next with a show at ACMI on Nov. 27! #film #Japan #anime #koto

Thank you Brisbane & QAGOMA for hosting our screening! What an amazing audience. A special note of appreciation to curator Robert Hughes for organizing our visit. Duo Yumeno were fantastic & we loved the James Turrell artwork outside the Gallery. Sydney is up next for the Japanese Film Festival.

Hello Brisbane! Join us tonight at the Gallery of Modern Art. The whole team arrived smoothly from the U.S. and we're excited to share our program of Japanese paper films. Duo Yumeno provides live musical accompaniment on koto & cello. #anime #Japan #film

japanesefilmfestival.net/paper-films/

If you’re a glutton for punishment, there’s a sequel focused more on PlayTime called Amuse œil

Lucy Fischer and Kristen Thompson. I did an epic video essay on Playtime with eye tracking. Google “Visual Disturbances and Tati”. There’s a bibliography in the final credits

Come to our Yale screening by car, boat, train, hot air balloon, turtle, tanuki, horse, motorcycle, skis, rocket or just run! As always, Duo Yumeno (Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto and Hikaru Tamaki on cello) provide live musical accompaniment.

Details: film.yale.edu/events/2025-...

Some of our favorite photos from our performance at The Pordenone Silent Film Festival. The photos were shot by the amazing Valerio Greco (@silentvalerio on Instagram). Duo Yumeno played from the orchestra pit. #Japan #film #anime #paper

Thanks! Discussions are underway to bring the program to the UK.

Hello from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival! We loved seeing Japanese paper films projected onto the Teatro Verdi theatre to promote our screening. Props to Phoebe for b-roll of Yoko, Hikaru, & Eric capturing the moment! A big THANK YOU to the Yanai Initiative for supporting our screening here.

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025: Pordenone Post No 2 Is it still a pathetic fallacy even if the weather is true but the drama is not? As I set out to begin my day with some major melodrama, there was heavy weather in the skies above Pordenone also. W…

Hello from Italy! We screened our program at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival yesterday and received our first review!

Thank you @pamhutch.bsky.social !

silentlondon.co.uk/2025/10/05/l...

Bonus: we also received "Intertitle of the Day!"

I love paper films' materiality, especially in an age where digital streams have largely replaced physical media. When color grading, I always look at the beginning of the filmstrip and darken it to reveal the ridges and spirals of fingerprints from those who handled the films 90+ years ago.

Love that film. Taught it for years.

Land ho! Tonkichi's Adventure is a charming anime where nothing is as it seems.

Sharing from Instagram: we're beyond thrilled to play the Pordenone Silent Film Festival next month in Italy. A truly magical venue and event. #japan, #anime, #silentcinema

PlayTime. Students initially hate it. But when discussing why they hate it, they mention details the other students missed & then they all realize they each saw a “different” PlayTime and then want to rewatch it to see the details they didn’t think were in the film & then realize Tati is a genius.

Philly, New Jersey, and NYC friends: new program premiering next week at Lafayette's Williams Center for the Arts on Sept. 12 at 7pm. Ticket's here:

williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...

As usual, Duo Yumeno joins us for live musical accompaniment!

In case you weren't up at 2am last night to catch the live broadcast from Japan, here's a link to the English news segment from NHK World broadcast on the Japanese Paper Film Project. Thank you to journalist Takatoshi Murakami & his amazing filming crew!

www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...

This summer NHK (Japan's national TV network) produced a great news segment on our project that broadcast in July & re-aired in August. They've now made an English version for NHK World. If you find yourself awake tonight at 2am (EST), then watch it live: www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...

Beware of speedy turtles! Suihō Tagawa's Norakuro was a popular manga character in the 1930s who also appears in several paper films. We scanned an incomplete version of this film in 2024 but collector Natsuki Matsumoto found a complete version which we scanned this summer in Japan.

Lehigh Valley, NYC, Philly Friends: Lafayette College's Williams Center for the Arts will host the Japanese Paper Film Project on Friday, September 12 @ 7pm! Prof Eric Faden will intro the program. Live musical accompaniment by Duo Yumeno. Please join us! williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...

New 2025 cut of our live roadshow program is done! New subtitles, fixed a lot of little (and sometimes big) mistakes, typos, random frames that crept into the cut, improved the Japanese, and incorporated several new films and/or better preservations of films already in the program!

Like so many paper films, this one begs for more research. This film - along with several others - targets (in an admittedly stereotyped way) 1930s Japanese girls & young women. Other films (like the Sutakora Sacchan films), however, upend gender norms. A book chapter/journal article awaits!