Tokyo Melody

Director: Elizabeth Lennard

1985 / 62min / DCP

In 1984, American-born, Paris-based artist Elizabeth Lennard traveled to Japan to make a film for French television about Ryuichi Sakamoto, pop star, solo artist, film actor, and film score composer. The result, shot over the course of a frenetic week, was Tokyo Melody, a mosaic work whose structure appears to have been determined by the multi-faceted nature of its subject’s creative practice: at various points we see Sakamoto snapping photographs, cruising through Tokyo on foot or via limousine, performing onstage with Yellow Magic Orchestra, pottering around his house, and in the studio for the recording of his Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia. Made so long after his collaboration with Nagisa Ōshima on Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Lennard’s scintillating film, now in a new 4K restoration, captures a pivotal juncture in an extraordinary life.

Distributor: Janus Films

Introduction by composer Paul Grimstad on Saturday, September 26th

Part of Sakamoto on Screen Portraits of an Artist