You may be familiar with Hayao Miyazaki and his modern classics — Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, etc. — but Japanese animation doesn’t stop with him. To wrap up Animation Month at The Bookworm, we’ll be showing the brilliant, bizarre, perspective-altering Millennium Actress, from the late, great master of anime, Satoshi Kon.

The story — based on the lives of Japanese actresses Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine – tells of a documentary filmmaker investigating the life of an elderly actress. But that barely begins to describe this wacky and relentless movie. As described by film critic Kenneth Turan:

For what “Actress” director and co-screenwriter Satoshi Kon has in mind is the shredding of the laws of space and time. In this film, past and present, fantasy and reality, film and history all occupy the same space at the same time. The director calls it trompe l’oeil or fool-the-eye filmmaking, and animation can fool the eye with the best of them.

Friday, July 31, 8 pm

FREE