Wednesday, June 5 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door
CHILDREN OF THE BEEHIVE
Directed by Hiroshi Shimizu • 1948
In Japanese with English subtitles
The limitless Hiroshi Shimizu promotes humanity with the awe-inspiring Children of the Beehive, a heartrending drama set in postwar Japan. Shimizu’s masterwork is an underappreciated yet enduring portrait of a band of war orphans on the road to whatever comes next. The film marked Shimizu’s first independently produced feature under his production banner, Beehive Films, and became a landmark work of Japanese independent cinema. Shimizu had been a Shochiku Studio fixture since his early twenties, where he was the inexhaustible director of over 160 films, but he produced only 5 — including two follow-ups to Children of the Beehive. In the film, a group of young orphaned boys (portrayed by unknown and amateur actors) hang around a train station. They befriend a repatriated soldier who decides to lead the gang to his former reformatory school, the Introspection Tower. They hit the road and Shimizu takes us on a journey through rural Japan, with landscapes stretching endlessly. Despite the heaviness of the subject material, the film is tender and warm, a nod of encouragement from a director with a deeply felt affinity towards children and the marginalized. In Children of the Beehive, Shimizu’s lost souls are shepherded not only towards a destination, but towards a state of belonging — amid the ruins, they find community. However, despite its sunny tone, it remains firmly rooted in the real world, with moments of beauty and connection alongside great tragedy and uncertainty. (RIN)
86 min • Hachi no Su Eiga-bu • 35mm from Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, permission Kobe Planet Film Archive.
Preceded by: “Boobs in the Woods” (Robert McKimson, 1950) – 7 min – 35mm
NEXT UP: Roving in Reversal w/ Jimmy Schaus on Sunday, June 9