Robinson No Niwa
Japan,
1987, 123 min
Shown in 1988
CREDITS
- dir
-
Masashi Yamamoto
- prod
-
Takashi Asai
- scr
-
Masashi Yamamoto, Mikio Yamazaki
- cam
-
Tom Dicillo, Noboru Asano
- cast
-
Kumiko Ota, Machizo Machida, Yuko Ueno
- source
-
Takashi Asai
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Masashi Yamamoto in person.
OTHER
Robinson’s Garden is a visual poem about the invincibility of plants in the most inhospitable of settings, the modern super-metropolis. The city is Tokyo, where a bored and rebellious young woman leaves behind her hedonistic companions and moves into an abandoned building with an overgrown garden. She proceeds to create her own world, growing cabbages, painting the walls and watching the stars at night. But there are continuing hints that, despite the woman’s attempt to create a hermetically sealed universe, the green world is waiting to break in.... Masashi Yamamoto is a young Japanese filmmaker who disavows any interest in the calm and orderly Japan of the tourist brochures. One possible indication of his viewpoint is his use of Jim Jarmusch’s cameraman, Tom DiCillo, and lighting designer, Jim Heyman (Stranger than Paradise).
—Walter V. Addiego
FACTOID #10
In 1960, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, which has inspired many women to jump into fountains, was pulled from the San Francisco International Film Festival’s program by the distributor and replaced with Roberto Rossellini’s Night over Rome.
