Robinson’s Garden
Leaving June 30
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2h 0m
Directed by Masashi Yamamoto • 1987 • Japan
Starring Kumiko Ota, Kou Machida, Tuko Ueno
On a drunken walk home, bohemian drug dealer Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) discovers an abandoned building on the outskirts of Tokyo. Attracted by the vast, untapped space overrun with luxuriant vegetation (and its potential for drug-addled isolation), she promptly sells all of her belongings and retreats from the world. She carves an island for herself out of the sprawling squat, where she is free to grow cabbage and express herself in any way she pleases—only interrupted by the occasional intrusion from her lover, left behind in civilization, and a mysteriously antagonistic pig-tailed girl who seems to live in the landscape. Lensed by frequent Jim Jarmusch collaborator Tom DiCillo, Masashi Yamamoto’s anticapitalist punk statement is a radical vision of a multicultural, marginal Tokyo, far removed from the dominant, consumerist image of the city during the bustling era of Japan’s economic bubble.
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