SPECIAL PREVIEW SCREENING! FILMMAKER IN PERSON! NOBUHIKO OBAYASHI: EARLY EXPERIMENTAL FILMS Anthology Film Archives presents a special event featuring a selection of shorts by Nobuhiko Obayashi, one of the leading figures of Japan’s alternative cinema. Recently receiving attention for the re-release of his studio debut HOUSE (1977), Obayashi’s early experimental films range in tone from melodrama to comedy and vary in style from the emotionally hyperbolic to the formally audacious. A pioneer of ‘home movies’ in Japan, Obayashi formed film collectives with Takahiko Iimura and Yoichi Takabayashi, namely the Association of Three (Sannin no Kai) and the Film Independents, and went on to direct youth dramas co-produced by the Art Theatre Guild, some titles of which will be screened as part of the ATG AND JAPANESE UNDERGROUND CINEMA series at MoMA (December 7-February 10, 2013). Shot in 8mm and 16mm, the films in this program display a playful hand-made sensitivity and light-hearted exuberance that has been retained in his more recent feature-length productions. The screening is a preview event in anticipation of a comprehensive survey of Japanese experimental cinema from the 1960s and 1970s, coming to Anthology in February 2013: RITUALS IN THE AVANT-GARDE: FILM EXPERIMENTS IN 1960s-70s JAPAN.