Film Forum

Mount Fuji, still an active volcano, has long inspired artists with its dramatically symmetrical snow-capped cone, its intimations of danger, and its historical/political role in Japanese consciousness. Dutch artist Fiona Tan, clearly under the influence of Chris Marker and Agnès Varda, draws upon more than 4000 images of the iconic mountain. In both English and Japanese (she speaks English, actor Hiroki Hasegawa speaks Japanese), the film muses upon history, mythology, aesthetics, and geology – plus love and grief, Godzilla and Van Gogh, the role of the cherry blossom, and much else. This is an experimental movie in the best sense – a creative fusion of words and images, historical and contemporary thought, and Eastern and Western philosophy.

All Tickets Free of Charge.

Tickets available on a first come, first served basis, day of show only, when the box office opens at noon (10:30am on Sunday). There is no advanced ticketing for this film.

Presented with generous support from the Ostrovsky Family Fund.

THE NETHERLANDS • 2016 • 80  MINS.
IN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES     

Reviews

“Ms. Tan keeps the movie moving, in both senses of the word, with her canny use of dissolves, deliberate camera movement within a frame, and an ingenious soundtrack. Genuinely poetic.”
– Glenn Kenny, The New York Times

“In Fiona Tan’s GLORIOUS ode to a Japanese volcano, Mount Fuji is both geological marvel and  malleable symbol, its solidity and grandeur inspiring conquest and contemplation… This portrait of a mountain offers a way of seeing something immense through fragments, the captured experience of walking its surface or seeing the snowcapped peak in the distance equally awesome.”
– Serena Donadoni, Village Voice

“HYPNOTIC. A meditation on transience and permanence - and an elegy for a lover and a nation.”
– Graham Fuller, Culture Trip