Deep in the Valley 谷中暮色

Shigehiko Hasumi chose “Deep in the Valley” as BEST 10 of 2009 in the  latest issue of FILM COMMENT.
The BEST 10 films include:

“Changeling”   Clint  Eastwood
“Christopher Columbus, The Enigma”  Monoel de Oliveira
“Deep in the Valley (Yanaka Boshoku)”   Atsushi Funahashi
“Drag me to Hell”  Sam Raimi
“Gran Trino”  Clint Eastwood
“Watashi ha Neko Stalker”
“Inglourious Bastards” Quentin Tarantino
“Public Enemies” Michael Mann
“The Taking of Pelham 123″ Tony Scott
“Yuki & Nina” Nobuhiro Suwa & Hippolyte Girardot

The new design of the Japanese flyer has just come out. Now it doesn’t look like a horror film as the last one with the burning pagoda did. It looks soft and easy with the white back ground and the part-colored street shot of Yanaka. Please pass them around!

This fall “Deep in the Valley” will be released at CineMart Shinjuku, an established art house theater in Tokyo. It’ll open at the end of October or the beginning of November. We’ll keep you posted when the new posters and flyer designs are complete.

We’d like to express our deepest thank you to the people who worked on the film in Yanaka. It was great experience to film in the neighborhood and we learned so much thru the interviews and met many people. we’d like to keep the momentum going and spread the film to all over Japan and the world.

Last night “Deep in the Valley” had the first public screening at Yanaka Community Center. More than 150 people came and packed the large conference room. After the warm reception in Berlin and Hong Kong, the film returned to Yanaka finally and accomplished its original mission: to show and to think of Five-Story Pagoda to local Yanakans. They included the local casts such as Katsuhiro Kato, Miyoko Ogawa, Rokusen Wakayagi, Kozo Noike, Yoshiaki Kikuchi, Chief Priest Matsuoka, also the local NPOs and stores such as Yanesen-Kobo and Mihara-ya. Now the film has started marching on and expanding from local theaters to the world. Thank you very much!

Atsushi Funahashi

We’ll have a sneak-preview of “Deep in the Valley” in Yanaka, Tokyo. After the world premiere in Berlin lots of people in Yanaka requested to see the film. Almost all the casts from local neighborhood will attend the screening. Please join us!

WHEN: April 11th, 2009 18:30~20:45

WHERE: Yanaka Community Center “Ohiroma” 5-6-5, Yanaka, Taito-ku, Tokyo　>>MAP

Q?: BIG RIVER FILMS info@film-echoes.com/ +81-3-3821-3445

Asian Premiere screening was held at City Plaza, Hong Kong on March 26th. The audience was very positive and enthusiastic to the film and Q&A session after the screening became quite heated-up discussion. Director Funahashi has gone back to Tokyo, but there will be another screening on April 2nd. For details;
http://www.hkiff.org.hk/eng/film/detail/1173.html

This week “Deep in the Valley” will have its Asian Premiere at Hong Kong International Film Festival. It will be screened twice, on March 26th and April 2nd. It’s also nominated for the SIGNIS award. Atsushi Funahashi will be flying to Hong Kong tomorrow to attend the screening and Q&A on 26th. Please check it out!

Screenings
Date:      26 Mar 2009
Time:     7:15  PM
Code:     26UC3E1
Venue:      UA Cityplaza

Date:     02  Apr 2009
Time:     7:30 PM
Code:      02UL4E1
Venue:     UA Langham  Place

http://www.hkiff.org.hk/eng/film/detail/1173.html

Here are the tag lines of positive reviews on “Deep in the Valley.”

Persuasive, thought-provoking and occasionally touching: a kind of “8mm Paradiso,” Japanese-style.
- Neil Young, Hollywood Reporter

Impeccable, poetry and reflexion integrating attitudes.
- Von Heike Kühn, Frankfurter Rundschau

Interweaving documentary and fiction, as well as the use of black-and-white and colour, with an extraordinary sense of visual poetry, the director brings these contrasting societies together.
- Anne Thomas, dw-world.de.

Understated, never didactic, the films draws the past into the lives of its young, present-day protagonists, luring them to discover it and to find themselves.

- Latika Padgaonkar, DearCinea.com, (India’s biggest web portal of cinema.)

It is this young man who committed the impossible act of knocking his master off the throne that the older generation admires today as one of the great founders of tradition. This relativizes the conflict between the generations very nicely.
- Christoph Terhechte, Program Director,

Forum of New Cinema, Berlin International Film Festival

Another great review has come out. It is by Latika Padgaonkar for DearCinema.com, India’s biggest portal for cinema.

“Understated, never didactic, the film draws the past into the lives of its young, present-day protagonists, luring them to discover it and to find themselves.”

You can see the full article;

http://dearcinema.com/fresh-from-berlin-deep-in-the-valley/

The full line-up of Hong Kong International Film Festival has just been released. “Deep in the Valley” will be screened twice in their Indie Power section.

http://www.hkiff.org.hk/eng/film/detail/25/1173.html

Director Atsushi Funahashi will attend the screening and Q&A on March 26th.

Thanks!