Japanese film Summer Wars at Pitt, February 25.

The final installment of this month's Pittsburgh Anime Film Series is 2009's Summer Wars (サマーウォーズ). A plot summary from the film's North American site:

Kenji is your typical teenage misfit. He’s good at math, bad with girls, and spends most of his time hanging out in the all-powerful, online community known as OZ. His second life is the only life he has – until the girl of his dreams, Natsuki, hijacks him for a starring role as a fake fiancée at her family reunion. Things only get stranger from there. A late-night email containing a cryptic mathematic riddle leads to the unleashing of a rogue AI intent on using the virtual word of OZ to destroy the real world, literarily. As Armageddon looms on the horizon, Kenji and his new “family” set aside their differences and band together to save the worlds they inhabit in this “near-perfect blend of social satire and science fiction.”

The movie starts at 7 pm at the Frick Fine Arts Building in Oakland (map). It's free and open to the public.

Sister City Haiyang.

Reading about a Lunar Near Year event in Cranberry that already took place we learned that Cranberry Township has a sister city in China. Haiyang is a coastal city with a population of 716,060 and an under-developed Wikipedia page. Other Asian places with local ties are Wuhan, China and Saitama prefecture, Japan, both of which are Sister Cities to Pittsburgh.

Three Asian films at "13 Hours of Grindhouse", February 23.

Taiwan's Wolf-Devil Woman (狼女白魔) is one offering next Saturday.

I turned to the South Hills Almanac for news of the "13 Hours of Grindhouse" at Dormont's Hollywood Theater on February 23. (And I turned to Wikipedia for an explanation of the grindhouse genre.) Local gem The Hollywood Theater (map), which is showing a Japanese anime film on the 24th, will include in the series, according to the Almanac:

“Savage!” (aka “Back Valor,” 1973, Philippines), “Angels from Hell” (1968, USA), “Wolf-Devil Woman” (1982, Taiwan), “The Killing Machine” (1976, Japan), “Weapons of Death” (1977, Italy), “Massacre Time” (aka “The Brute and the Beast,” 1966, Italy), “Pieces” (1982, Spain), “The Big Bust Out” (1972, Italy/West Germany) and “Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia” (1977, Canada).

The "festival" of domestic and international exploitation films runs from 11 am to 1 am the following day, and includes, again according to the Almanac,

a select number of vendors on hand in the theater’s lobby and lower level, selling a wide range of movie-related items such as DVDs, books, records, magazines, posters, T-shirts and original works of art.

Each movie is $5, and you can get an all-day pass for $15.

Japanese film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, February 24.

The Japanese animated film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (ホッタラケの島 〜遥と魔法の鏡〜 Hottarake no Shima: Haruka to Mahō no Kagami) will play at Dormont's Hollywood Theater (map) on February 24.

The Hollywood Theater shows the occasional Japanese or anime film, and is about the only theater around town to do so outside of an annual film series. Last year the theater showed the animes Summer Wars and Madoka Magica, and the live-action I Wish and Battle Royale. It is currently in jeopardy of closing and is in the middle of a fundraising campaign to buy a digital projector.

Tibetan film Old Dog at IUP's Foreign Film and Music Series.

I'll post about this again in April, but the Tibetan film Old Dog will run on April 10 as part of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2013 Foreign Film and Music Series. From the series' website:

A family on the Himalayan plains discovers their dog is worth a fortune, but selling it comes at a terrible price. Old Dog is both a humorous and tragic allegory and a sober depiction of life among the impoverished rural Tibetan community.

There are two showings, at 5:30 pm and 8:00 pm, in Sprawls Hall. The shows are free and are funded in part by the IUP Student Activity Fee. Before I repost in April I will ask if there is a way for non-students to chip in a little money to the Office of International Education, which is putting on the series. IUP student SiLu Jia will be the evening's musical guest.

I bring up the series now for three reasons. I noticed, four days late, that a Chinese film was included in this year's series on February 10. Additionally, Indiana is within reasonable driving distance to Pittsburgh at roughly 90 minutes away, and may be of interest to people on this side of the state. Finally, the campus puts on good international films. The best film series I've seen in western PA was a Korean festival nearly a decade ago, which had Chunhyang; Spring Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring; Chihwaseon; Wakiki Brothers; and a few others.

Sushi: The Global Catch at Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival.

Advance notice for this, but Carnegie Mellon will show the documentary Sushi: The Global Catch as part of its 2013 International Film Festival on April 10. Details to follow, but the festival will run from March 21 through April 14 (the website gives multiple variations on this range) and hopes---according to festival organizers---to include various cultural activities and presentations to promote Japanese culture in general and Japanese community in the area.

Memories at Carnegie Mellon, February 18.

The third installment in the 2013 Pittsburgh Anime Film Series is 1995's Memories, a film comprised of three episodes based on Otomo Katsuhiro's manga. Writes the film series' website:

In “Magnetic Rose,” an abandoned spaceship contains a world created by one woman’s memories; a young lab assistant accidentally transforms himself into a human biological weapon in “Stink Bomb”; and “Cannon Fodder” depicts a city whose entire purpose is firing cannons at an unseen enemy.

The movie begins at 7 pm in the McConomy Auditorium in the University Student Center (you'll find it on Google Maps; it's behind the Forbes Ave opp Morewood Ave. bus stop). Admission is free.

Tehching Hsieh lecture at CMU School of Art, February 19.

At the 2010 Gwangju Biennale, from DesignBoom. Hsieh photographed himself once an hour for one year, and has the timecards and prints to prove it.

Carnegie Mellon University School of Art will host Tehching Hsieh on February 19 as part of the Spring 2013 Lecture Series. Hsieh

was born in Taiwan in 1950. He did his first performance “Jump Piece” in 1973 and broke both ankles. Trained as a sailor, he arrived in Philadelphia in 1974, jumped ship, and stayed in the states as an illegal immigrant for fourteen years until granted amnesty in 1988. From 1978 to 1999, Hsieh did five One Year Performances and the Thirteen Year Plan in New York City. The first four One Year Performances made him a regular name in the art scene; the last two, in which he intentionally retreated from the art world, set a tone of sustained invisibility. Since 2000, Hsieh—released from the restriction of not showing work during the Thirteen Year Plan—has lectured and exhibited worldwide, including MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Liverpool Biennial, the Gwangju Biennial, and the Sao Paulo Biennial. He received the United States Artists award in 2008.

Google will be your friend for more on the artist. Pictured above is an exhibit at the 2010 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea from DesignBoom, which has more photographs on and information about on Hsieh's work.

All in This Tea at Winchester Thurston School, February 23.

As part of the annual Asia Unreeled series, Winchester Thurston School in Shadyside (map) will show the 2007 documentary All in This Tea on Saturday, February 23, at 2 pm.

Japanese plays, "Seinendan Theater Company – Robot / Android - Human Theater" in Pittsburgh, March 8 and 9.

Two Japanese one-act plays will be performed at the Andy Warhol Museum (map) on March 8 and 9. The Seinendan Theater Company + Osaka University Robot Theater Project, sponsored by the Japan Foundation and Japan Society, present "I, Worker" and "Sayonara", which star two robots and "an incredibly human-like android who consoles the human actor dealing with a fatal illness", respectively. An introduction from the Japan Society website:

Imagine a time when "robot maids" are commonly found in family households. That's the much-anticipated setting of these two heartrending short plays by Oriza Hirata, founder of Japan's celebrated Seinendan Theater Company. In Sayonara (android and human actors), an android is bought to console a girl suffering from a fatal illness, but when its mechanics go awry, the meaning of life and death to humans and robots comes into question. In I, Worker (robots and human actors), a husband's struggle to cope with the loss of his child is juxtaposed with the malaise of one of his robots, which has lost all motivation to work. This double bill was developed in collaboration with Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro, a leading international researcher on robotics and Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University. Sayonara will be performed in English and Japanese with English subtitles. I, Worker will be performed in Japanese with English subtitles.

The Verge has a review from last week's New York shows.

The performances are at 8:00 pm on both days, and tickets are available at the Warhol Museum website.