Japan Society Screening Hideaki Anno’s Love And Pop Film

New York-based Japan Society continues its track record of surfacing and spotlighting the best in Japanese art and pop culture, with its latest premiere in the newly restored 2K edition of the live-action film Love And Pop, directed by anime director Hideaki Anno in between his work on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Japan Society describes the film:

 “Everything in the world’s got a time for change,” muses high schooler Hiromi (Asumi Miwa) in Hideaki Anno’s dreamy day-in-the-life experiment—a diaristic stream of consciousness with shifting aspect ratios, rapid cuts and fisheye-lensed perspectives—capturing the 16-year-old’s delicate interiority on a single date: July 19, 1997. Hiromi records her life with the flash of her camera, documenting the roving exploits of her band of friends as they congregate and sift through Shibuya’s vast array of cafes, plazas and malls, chatting about love, desire and boys. Enchanted by a dazzling topaz ring, she impulsively probes the world of enjo kosai (compensated dating) to earn its worth by day’s end. An intimate close-up of a teenage girl’s plaintive essence, the Evangelion creator’s live-action debut breaks away from convention in its liberating experimental form. Adapting Ryu Murakami’s (Coin Locker Babies, Audition) novel Love and Pop: Topaz 2, Anno’s transgressive shot-on-video opus formulates a coda for the turn of millennia—a point-and-shoot testament of youth languishing in the perpetual disarray of Japan’s lost decade.

The film, originally released in 1998 in the wake of the mainstream visibility of Neon Genesis Evangelion polarized Japanese critics and even earned Anno critical accolades when the film was released on DVD in the West in 2004.

Japan Society’s restoration screening is set for February 1st with tickets on sale now.