Tokyo Is Dreaming (2008)

Directed by

Peter I. Chang

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 08m

Elsewhere

IMDb

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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