Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata and the Masters of Studio Ghibli , a retrospective celebrating the great animation studio of Japan, kicks off on Friday, June 22 at The Uptown.
The series features 15 films from Ghibli, the studio created by animation master Hayao Miyazaki, on 35mm film and plays for two weeks at The Uptown. I profiled the series for Seattle Weekly here. As a companion piece, I offer thumbnails notes on ten standout films in the series. See SIFF Cinema for the complete schedule.
Castle in the SkyNausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (1984) – Hayao Miyazaki’s second feature and the feature debut of Studio Ghibli. Set on a faraway world of medieval castles and massive airships and splintered kingdoms, the story from Miyazaki follows an adventurous young princess who discovers the secret of the toxic jungle that spews poisonous pollen and breeds giant angry insects and the cure for her world, still recovering from a global war 1,000 years ago that almost destroyed the planet. Miyazaki’s fabulous images are full of a sense of wonder and his animation style is glorious and graceful. It’s a simple tale with a plucky heroine that became a hallmark of Miyazaki’s later films, and the themes (and even some of the story elements) would be revisited with greater complexity and resonance in Princess Mononoke. (Thursday, June 28)
Castle in the Sky (1986) is a grand adventure from Miyazaki’s private mythos, the odyssey of an orphaned girl with a magic crystal and a courageous young engineer’s apprentice is set in a world of magnificent flying machines and sky-born cities. Chased by a wacky pirate family and shifty, suspicious government agents, it all converges on the legendary floating castle of Laputa, an ancient civilization in the clouds which holds the key to great power. (Friday, June 22 and Monday, June 25)
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