Movie Screening

Edo Avant Garde

A Film by Linda Hoaglund
English and Japanese with subtitles (83 mins)

Date:
Saturday, September 28, 2024
@11:00AM (Door opens @10:45AM)
Venue:
The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles
(5700 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036)
FREE ADMISSION, NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED

About the Film:

During the Edo era (1603‒1868), Japanese artists innovated many strategies to bring the natural world and its creatures to life. To animate trees, puppies, waves, and clouds they incorporated asymmetry, abstraction, stylization, and empty space—techniques that profoundly influenced modern art in the West. In Linda Hoaglund’s film Edo Avant Garde, she explores the origins of Japanese artists’ creative efflorescence by filming some of the most closely-guarded Edo-era masterpieces in museum and private collections across the U.S. and Japan, unraveling how artists hundreds of years ago in one of the world’s most isolated countries captured the natural world in strikingly unique ways.

The film’s exquisite cinematography by Japanese Academy Award-winner Norimichi Kasamatsu and outstanding original soundtrack by Satoshi Takeishi and Shoko Nagai present a remarkable, immersive experience of the Edo era’s byobu, folding screens. Simultaneously dynamic and mesmerizing, at its heart, Edo Avant Garde offers a unique opportunity to look closely and see how radically different Japanese art emerged in the 17th century.

This screening will officially close the exhibition Inspired by Edo which was on view at the Japan Foundation from August 5. For more information about the exhibition, please visit the event page.

About the Film Maker:

Linda Hoaglund is a bilingual filmmaker born and raised in Japan. The daughter of American missionary parents, she attended Japanese public schools and graduated from Yale University. She has directed and produced five feature-length films about art and the relationship between Japan and the U.S.: Wings of Defeat (2007), ANPO: Art X War (2010), Things Left Behind (2012), The Wound and The Gift (2014), and Edo Avant Garde (2019). Most recently, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art created a K-12 Arts Curriculum inspired by Edo Avant Garde with Hoaglund.