Miss Hokusai

Join us for Free Monthly Japanese Film Screening!

This event is being held at Ellen Melville Centre usually on the last Friday of the month and the film start from 6pm. Screenings are preceded by short videos about Japanese culture from 5:45pm.

- Free Admission
- All films have English subtitles.
- Booking is not necessary. First come and first served basis with a maximum capacity of 100 people under "Orange".
- Films, dates and times are subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances.

We hope that you will enjoy the films and gain a deeper insight into various aspects of Japanese culture.

May 2022 film: "Miss Hokusai"
(Director: Keiichi Hara, 2015, 90min. Rating: PG)

From award-winning director Keiichi Hara (Colorful) and Japanese powerhouse Production I.G (creators of Ghost in the Shell) comes a remarkable story of the daughter behind one of history’s most famous artists.

As all of Edo flocks to see the work of the revered painter Hokusai, his daughter O-Ei toils diligently inside his studio. Her masterful portraits, dragons and erotic sketches – sold under the name of her father – are coveted by upper crust Lords and journeyman print makers alike. Shy and reserved in public, in the studio O-Ei is as brash and uninhibited as her father, smoking a pipe while sketching drawings that would make contemporary Japanese ladies blush. But despite this fiercely independent spirit, O-Ei struggles under the domineering influence of her father and is ridiculed for lacking the life experience that she is attempting to portray in her art. Miss Hokusai‘s bustling Edo (present-day Tokyo) is filled with yokai spirits, dragons, and conniving tradesmen, while O-Ei’s relationships with her demanding father and blind younger sister provide a powerful emotional underpinning to this sumptuously-animated coming-of-age tale.

© 2014-2015 Hinako Sugiura・MS.HS / Sarusuberi Film Partners

Presented by the Consulate-General of Japan, the Japan Foundation, Ellen Melville Centre and Auckland Council.