📽️ A Trip to the Cinema

We’re just going to completely skip over how I basically never came back to finish up Blogtober. Is that okay? You don’t want to hear my excuses, let’s just get into it.

# An Illustrated Guide to Unique Local Cinemas

We are rapidly approaching the end of the year, which means I need to try and use up as many of my gift cards and coupons before they expire. To that end, I used up my balance on one of my bookshop gift cards on 人が集まる、文化が集まる！　まちの個性派映画館 / An Illustrated Guide to Unique Local Cinemas by Maho Miki.

Since moving to Japan, I haven’t really gone to the movies all that often because of how expensive it is, and my Japanese level wasn’t high enough to understand most domestic films. This meant I was usually limited to the big Hollywood blockbusters that managed to secure Japanese distribution, which means a lot of Marvel and Star Wars and Disney (oops, those are all the same, aren’t they) and not a whole lot of really interesting stuff.

That doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Earlier this year, we managed to catch Sinners in theaters. I even bought the program for it, which has interviews with the cast in Japanese to give some background and context for the film to an audience who may not understand just how, uh, fucking racist the US is.

I cannot WAIT for this to come out on Bluray.

And these days my Japanese listening is good enough to appreciate Japanese films, even if I don’t understand all of it. A couple of weeks ago, we went to see the theatrical re-release of Princess Mononoke in IMAX¹ and had a blast. Daikon had never seen an IMAX movie before, and Princess Mononoke is our favorite Ghibli², so I surprised him with tickets.

It reminded me that spending a day at the theater to watch something I must’ve already seen dozens of times can still be a new and fun experience. Plus, I mean… there are so few things in this world that will ever be as good as seeing Princess Mononoke on the silver screen.

When I was a student working for the school papers (high school and university), I would get annual passes to HIFF. In uni, I was also in the theater program which meant I could get discounted or free tickets to a lot of theatrical productions, and being in the orchestra meant a lot of time either performing in or listening to concerts. I spent a lot of my formative years in a dark theater among a crowd of my peers, looking up at a screen or symphony or band of actors. There’s just something really good about going to a theater, and I’ve missed it sorely since moving here.

And that brings us back to the present day, when I bought the Illustrated Guide to Unique Local Cinemas on a whim. I had a weird sense of nostalgia flipping through the pages and looking at all these small theaters. I’d never been to any of them, but it reminded me of the small theaters in my hometown. All of them have closed by now, and even the big multiplexes downtown are struggling to stay above water. I figured I should check out at least some of these local Japanese cinemas before they too close forever.

Happily, there was one such theater nearby: Cinekoya in Kugenuma.

# Cinekoya

Following the closures of Fujisawa Odeon (藤沢オデヲン) in 2007 and Fujisawa Chuo in 2010, film fans in Fujisawa rallied around Cinekoya, which opened in 2017 and promised to create a new style of local theater for people to not only watch movies, but as a gathering place for the community.

To that end, Cinekoya is a lot of things all at once. It is a bakery that serves up fresh bread to locals; it is a book-cafe, with a lot of artbooks and novels to peruse while drinking coffee; it is a forum for discussing and presenting on various cultural topics; it is a photo and art gallery for locals to show off and sell their crafts; and, of course, it is a movie theater focusing on indie films and documentaries. How cool!

I looked up the schedule and saw that they were showing I Saw the TV Glow this month. I’d been meaning to see it anyway, and so I figured instead of streaming it, why not use this as a chance to check out a cool little theater?

Caught the local over to Kugenuma and had a nice walk around the quiet neighborhood before heading to the theater.

We've arrived!

The theater seats 22 people and is on a first-come-first-serve basis³. We arrived two hours early⁴ and spent a lot of time in the first floor book-cafe looking through zines and artbooks and feeling very sophisticated. 🧐☕ That was an experience all on its own. It was also very funny to me just how many books there were about bookstores and book-cafes around Japan. Must resist the urge to also pick up an Illustrated Guide to Unique Local Bookstores…

We got this pink ticket/sticker when we bought our tickets, and snagged a free program that helpfully explains to Japanese audiences some of the many American pop culture references that appear throughout the film.

When it came time to be seated for our film, the staff member led us upstairs to the theater. The seats were a fun mix of individual felt-lined armchairs and loveseat sofas, with round end tables sprinkled here and there. We didn’t do this, but the idea is that you can order from the cafe and they will bring your drink up to you before the movie starts. Since we had arrived so early, we had first choice of seats, and snagged two soft armchairs smack dab in the center.

# The film experience

Let me tell you, it was so refreshing watching the pre-film trailers and not seeing a single light saber or superhero or singing CG princess or any of that. It was a mix of slightly older films, smaller indie(-adjacent) works, overseas documentaries, and a documentary about Fujisawa made by locals. There was a healthy selection of non-English foreign movies as well. They were kinds of films that used to make me excited to go to the local theater because who knew what I would be getting that day.

Unfortunately, the one downside to a small theater versus a big commercial multiplex is that sometimes the audiovisual quality just isn’t there. I didn’t have an issue with the projector, but the sound system was super blown out and really struggled to keep up with the film. It was so loud and the frequencies were crushed together, so during intense scenes in the film it would be really overwhelming (in a bad way) and honestly painful for my eardrums. It was like sitting next to the speakers at a loud concert without earplugs.

The Illustrated Guide touts the sound system as being “impactful” and so I wonder if this is an intentional choice to make it so loud that you can literally feel your body vibrating with the noise. I personally found this quite unpleasant and disorienting, and I left the film with a throbbing headache. I’m not going to lie, that was pretty unfortunate, and if this is how they screen all of their films then I think I will need to be pickier about only going to documentaries and such.

But that aside, it was a pretty cool experience. Afterwards there was a kind of parlor room discussion of the movie for everyone to gather and share their thoughts. Daikon and I ended up skipping this to grab some dinner and fresh air, and we walked to a park and sat on the benches talking about the film ourselves. Maybe in the future, I will have enough courage to stick around for the post-film discussion at the theater itself.

I needed to get some fresh air and clear my head before I could even begin to process what I had just seen.

And that was Cinekoya! I still haven’t really put my thoughts together on I Saw the TV Glow. Maybe I shall blog about that tomorrow? Fingers crossed! 🤞

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