BFI Southbank London - Anime Weekend 2016 Details

Date: 2016 April 25 15:53

Posted by Joe

London anime fans will want to head to the BFI Southbank for the return of their Anime Weekend. The screenings are held every other year. This screenings are set to run from Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th June 2016 at the BFI Southbank.

This time around they're showing the original Ghost in the Shell Movie, the new Ghost In the Shell Movie called Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (you can read more about the naming here), Empire of the Corpses, Psycho-Pass: The Movie, The Boy and the Beast. There'll also be a special screening and QA of anime Harmony, the QA features it's director Michael Arias (who also directed Tekkonkinkreet and produced The Animatrix).

The BFI also suggest you catch their screening of the latest (and currently last) Studio Ghibli Film When Marnie Was There.

The BFI anime screenings have proved to be very popular in the past. As always we advise booking early to avoid disappointment.

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Press release as follows:

Anime Weekend returns to BFI Southbank, 3 – 5 June

Monday 25 April 2016, London

The BFI’s Anime Weekend returns to BFI Southbank from Friday 3 – Sunday 5 June; this much anticipated biennial event boasts an excellent selection of recent work, as well as previews of the best forthcoming anime releases. The weekend celebration will mark Manga Entertainment’s 25th birthday as well as pay tribute to Japanese science fiction writer Satoshi Ito, who died in 2009 aged 34.

The weekend event will mark the anniversary of the biggest names in anime, Manga Entertainment, with a screening of the legendary and eerily prophetic Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995) alongside the franchise’s latest edition Ghost in the Shell: the New Movie (Kazuya Nomura, 2015) returning to the tale in 2029. Ghost in the Shell’s director, Mamoru Oshii, recently directed his first English-language live-action film Garm Wars: The Last Druid (2014), which will also be screened during the weekend.

In honour of the late Satoshi Ito, there will be will be screenings of two adaptions of his sci-fi novels including a preview of Harmony (Michael Arias, Takashi Nakamura, 2015) and Empire of the Corpses (Ryôtarô Makihara, 2015), based on his third book and unfinished fourth book respectively. The screening of Harmony will be followed by a Q&A with director Michael Arias. Arias has had a varied filmmaking career, spanning the worlds of visual effects, computer graphics, and traditional animation; early in his career he worked as a camera assistant on the motion control stages of such effects-heavy films as The Abyss and Total Recall and he later created digital sequences for the likes of David Cronenberg, the Coen Brothers, and Spike Lee. In 2003 Arias produced the Matrix-inspired anthology film The Animatrix, and in 2006 made his feature directing debut with Tekkonkinkreet, which was shown at the 2007 Berlinale and was awarded Japan’s Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

Two films which featured in the BFI London Film Festival last year will preview during the weekend celebration. The latest Studio Ghibli film When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014), will receive a special family preview. The Oscar-nominated film is an exquisitely hand-drawn treat, and if Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki are to be believed, it is the final Studio Ghibli for the foreseeable future. There will also be a preview of The Boy and the Beast (2015), the latest film from the great Mamoru Hosoda, director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children.