AsiaLENS: AEMS Documentary Film and Discussion Series at the Spurlock 2013–2014: Tokyo Waka: A City Poem

• Event Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2013
• Time: 7:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Film

This series of public film screenings and lecture/discussion programs is organized by the Asian Educational Media Service (AEMS) at the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies. It is planned in collaboration with the Spurlock Museum and presented in the Knight Auditorium. Guest scholars and members of the campus and local communities will introduce the films and lead post-screening audience discussions.

Tokyo Waka: A City Poem
Directed, produced by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson. 2012. 63 minutes.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

Tokyo Waka presents a lyrical portrait of the complex and compelling patterns of life found within a world city by focusing on its huge and surprising population of more than 20,000 crows. Through interviews of a wide variety of Tokyo residents including a tofu seller, a homeless woman, a Buddhist priest, conceptual artists, and a gardener, this film not only reveals the uneasy relationship between humans and wildlife cohabiting in an urban environment, but also provides an episodic and discursive poem about life and culture in modern Japan.

Distributed by Bullfrog Films (external link)
Filmmaker website: Stylo Films (external link).