Sunday, May 10, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Aero Theatre, Santa Monica
### **ABOUT THE FILMS:** **FLOWING, 1956, Dir. Mikio Naruse, 116 Mins, Janus Films, Japan** *In Japanese with English subtitles.* Three super-stars lead a great cast: head-of-the-geisha-house Isuzu Yamada looks on the bright side, while daughter Hideko Takamine works that sewing machine. But quietly observing maid Kinuyo Tanaka is the only one who actually realizes the inevitable end of their world in a harsh post-war Tokyo. FORMAT: 35mm **MOTHER, 1952, Dir. Mikio Naruse, 98 Mins, Janus Films, Japan** *In Japanese with English subtitles.* Based on a children’s essay adapted by famed Japanese screenwriter Yoko Mizuki in her first work for Naruse, Mother stars the legendary actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka as a beleaguered working class matron, whose self-sacrificing efforts to maintain her family during Tokyo’s postwar reconstruction make her a paragon of maternal virtue in the eyes of her teenage daughter Toshiko (Kyoko Kagawa). Toshiko idealizes her mother and the value system she embodies, a naive perspective that pleasantly lifts what in fact unfurls as a bitterly sad, episodic tale of slow-burn economic emmiseration. Anticipating the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien in its ironically sentimental vision of Confucian dissolution, Naruse’s film is a melodramatic tearjerker for the ages. FORMAT: 35mm