Shinji Sōmai's TYPHOON CLUB (1985) - new 4K restoration!
One of the key independent Japanese films of the '80s, we present Somai's seminal teenage cult film in a new restoration, voted 10th-best Japanese film of all time in a Kinema Junpo poll.
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Sep 26, 2023, 8:00 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA
Typhoon Club
directed by Shinji Sōmai
1985, 115m, Japan, DCP
New 4K restoration courtesy of Cinema Guild
Voted the greatest Japanese director of the 1980s by readers of Japan’s most authoritative film magazine (Kinema Junpo), Shinji Somai’s films are defined by a consistently inspired use of long takes, disarming tonal shifts, and an enduring interest in both the ecstasies and calamities of teenage life. Though his body of work remains little-known in the U.S., we are thrilled to present a new restoration of Sōmai’s best-known film, voted the 10th best Japanese film of all time in a Kinema Junpo poll. Typhoon Club follows a group of junior high school students (among them teen idol Youki Kudoh, from Jarmusch’s Mystery Train) at a suburb in Tokyo who, anticipating a major tropical storm, hole up inside the school over five days, as a series of psychosexual and existential crises develop between them. Not unlike a darker spin on John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, Sōmai’s film is a fascinating, turbulent window into life on the cusp of adulthood. Please note: this film contains a sequence of sexual assault which may upset some viewers.
Special thanks to Tom Sveen (Cinema Guild).
Winner: Grand Prix, Tokyo International Film Festival, 1985
“When [I] was in college, everyone dreaming of becoming a filmmaker was trying to emulate Sōmai.” -Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of Drive My Car
"Maybe the last great master of Japanese film history." -Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Cure
"This is cinema." - Hou Hsiao-hsien
"One of the most beautiful and touching teenage films I’ve ever seen. An absolutely devastating film." – Bernardo Bertolucci
“All of [Sōmai’s] films contain, and most are structured around, long takes of a sustained clarity, beauty, wildness, and depth of expression unparalleled in the history of cinema… The age of Sōmai’s people is irrelevant. They are all running, jumping, fucking, swimming, dancing, crawling, tumbling to keep up with the world’s mutability—very alive, and hurtling toward death.” -Bingham Bryant, The Brooklyn Rail
“[Sōmai] puts himself at the level of these kids and tries to get inside their heads and tries not to approach them with any preconceptions from an adult point of view… That’s why [his] films are so honest to me, and also sometimes very brutal and surprising, because the kids don’t correspond to the constraints of what kids are supposed to be like in movies.” -Chris Fujiwara