Cinematheque and Vancity Theatre scheduled to screen films from the masters of Studio Ghibli
I watched my first Hayao Miyazaki movie around age seven — My Neighbour Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) — with my big sister on VHS. We were sitting in the basement on beanbags (mine was pink and hers was purple) and the shaggy orange and brown carpet beneath our feet, the rented tape spooling through the VCR. In the summer, we had picnics in the backyard and ate whole cucumbers like Mei in the movie. I don’t know how many times we rented that tape and other Miyazaki films like Kiki’s Delivery Service (Majo no takkyubin, 1989) from the local video store, but it probably would have been cheaper to just buy a copy.
Hayao Miyazaki is a world-renowned Japanese film director, animator, manga artist and screenwriter. He co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio, in 1985. Since then he has directed more than 20 films and animated, designed, or wrote more than two-dozen more. In North America, he is best known for Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, 2001), which won an Academy Award in 2003 for Best Animated Feature.
[pullquote]Many of his feature-length films have themes of ecological and political strife, and depict strong female characters, which is important to me.[/pullquote]
In high school, I began to watch more of Miyazaki’s films, such as Castle in the Sky (Tenku no shiro Rapyuta, 1986) and Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-hime, 1997), and also branched out to other Studio Ghibli filmmakers. For my 13th birthday, my parents gave me a little 13-inch screen with a built-in VCR for my bedroom, and I loved watching movies in bed. I remember seeing director Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka, 1988) and crying my eyes out. That film takes place in WWII era Japan, where a young boy and his little sister flee the city after their mother is killed in an air raid. The story follows the two siblings’ struggle to survive and stay hopeful.
Miyazaki’s films are not so directly allegorical , but his social commentary is apparent to older viewers. Having lived through the Second World War and grown up in postwar Japan, he developed a fascination for aviation through his father’s career as well as distaste for senseless conflict. Many of his feature-length films have themes of ecological and political strife, and depict strong female characters, which is important to me.
[pullquote]Miyazaki’s films are not so directly allegorical , but his social commentary is apparent to older viewers.[/pullquote]
When I was 16, I got the opportunity for an all-expenses paid trip to Japan. Vancouver had partnered with our sister port city in Japan to offer a student exchange for eight Vancouver students and eight Yokohama students. In the spring of 2003, my family and I hosted my exchange partner for 16 days, and in the autumn, I visited them in Japan.
Our activities were mostly arranged by the student exchange administration, but my host family arranged a couple special outings based on my interests. They knew how much I loved Hayao Miyazaki, but the Studio Ghibli Museum, which had only recently been established with the success of Spirited Away, was in Tokyo, a three-hour drive from Yokohama. Instead, they took me to one of the Ghibli gift shops in Yokohama, where I must have spent nearly an hour and a half looking around and spending thousands of yen.
My Neighbour Totoro was recently redubbed and re-released by Disney in 2006 featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning and her little sister Elle Fanning. I ordered it online, and when it arrived I immediately popped it into the DVD player. I couldn’t even watch the first five minutes; it sounded so wrong to me.
I wondered: why haven’t I watched any versions subtitled instead of dubbed? I still feel remiss sometimes for always watching the English dubbed versions. Luckily, Pacific Cinematheque and Vancity Theatre are co-hosting a bunch of Studio Ghibli films in a program called Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata, and the Masters of Studio Ghibli from Dec. 7, 2012 to Jan. 3, 2013. At the top of my list are Only Yesterday and The Ocean Waves, which were never released in North America. The films will all be in new 35mm prints and will screen at Cinematheque in Japanese with English subtitles and Vancity Theatre in English dubs.
