The 2013 animated film Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ) will play online at Row House Cinema as part of Japanese Film Week from July 31. From a 2014 New York Times review:
An orphaned girl and a fatherless boy bridge opposing societies in “Patema Inverted,” a delightful animated fable from Yasuhiro Yoshiura.Ticket information is coming soon. Two other films comprise Japanese Film Week, which actually runs two weeks through August 13: A Girl Missing (よこがお) and We Are Little Zombies (ウィーアーリトルゾンビーズ) , both from 2019.
When a scientific experiment goes awry, the laws of physics go nuts, and a subset of humans is forced underground, where gravity has been reversed. In this inverted world of tunnels and caverns, the sky is a terrifying blue-and-white hole for the unwary — like the 14-year-old Patema — to fall into.
Meanwhile, on the surface, young Age and his school friends aren’t faring much better under a totalitarian regime that forbids them to look toward the heavens.
Similar to Juan Solanas’s little-seen 2013 love story, “Upside Down,” this “Can we get along?” movie literalizes a physical attraction that acts as a counterargument to the divided worlds’ insistence on separation.
