Robinson's Garden
『ロビンソンの庭』
Newly remastered! Late one drunken night, drug-dealing slacker Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) stumbles upon a derelict warehouse in an abandoned industrial site on the outskirts of Tokyo overgrown with lush greenery. She returns to her newfound oasis with supplies and begins cultivating the land and painting the walls, inviting a cadre of hippies, artists, punkers and foreigners to escape from Japan’s bubble era cityscape. Over time, Kumi’s isolated attachment to her hidden garden begins to result in increasingly strange behavior, primarily witnessed by an equally strange child who always seems to be around. Directed by celebrated independent filmmaker Masashi Yamamoto (Wonderful Paradise) and shot on 16mm by Tom DiCillo (Stranger Than Paradise), Robinson’s Garden emphasizes mood, texture and atmosphere over plot and characters, resulting in a hypnotizing and beautifully otherworldly cinematic experience.
- Special Mention, Locarno International Film Festival 1987
- Winner: Reader Jury of the Zitty, Berlin International Film Festival 1987
“Robinson’s Garden is a true original…funny, unpredictable, quixotic magic” —The Financial Times
Note: This feature is soft-subtitled. Please click on the “CC” button in the lower-right corner of the player to enable English subtitles
Streaming in the U.S. from August 20-September 2 as part of JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film 2021