Underplayed Gems

Tokyo Is Dreaming (2008)

Tokyo Is Dreaming poster
Directed by
Peter I. Chang
Genre
documentary film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 08m
Elsewhere
IMDb
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The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This non-narrative documentary portrays daily life in Tokyo, using images and a score instead of a story. It contrasts modern architecture with historical newsreels to suggest a disconnected existence.

meditativeobservationalcontemplativeunsettlingnon-narrativeslow-pacedatmosphericreflective

What happens

Tokyo is Dreaming is a 2008 documentary film by Peter I. Chang which depicts life in the Japanese capital and is accompanied by a score from Calexico's John Convertino. As a non-narrative portrait of the bustling metropolis, the documentary is a modern-day take on the City Symphonies that flourished in early 20th Century cinema with films such as Man with a Movie Camera. In a review of the film for the U.K.'s Empire, critic David Parkinson noted, "As a street performer juggling knives is escorted out of a park by a combination of keepers and the police, Chang crosscuts between images of a nationalist rally and newsreels from the Tojo militarist era and draws some chilling similarities. He also makes striking contrasts between a variety of futurist objects and Tokyo's modernist architecture, with the segment seeming to conclude that the steel and glass structures in which citizens spend so much of their lives have reduced them to goldfish floating without much cognisance in an aimless existence." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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