Roslindale Monogatari

Our family has enjoyed attending New Bedford's Summerfest and the Lowell Folk Festival since we moved to Boston (almost) ten years ago. This year, for the first time, we attended the American Folk Festival in Bangor. As it turns out, this year our favorite Cajun group, the Bruce Daigrepont Cajun Band was making its only appearance in the northeast quarter of North America there. Over the three days of the festival, we caught all three performances of the BDCB and the accordion workshop Bruce participated in. We also got to chat a bit with both Bruce and with Gina Forsyth (the band's phenomenal fiddle player). Of course, lots more went on at the festival -- so much so that there were some groups that we never got to hear (except briefly in passing). Even so, we heard the Dixie Hummingbirds, two Eskimo throat singers (Nukarik), a band led by the son of a blues guitarist we used to hear long ago in Chicago (Bernard Allison), a group of "New Orleans Indians" (Big...

Yamabiko Gakko / Echoes from a Mountain School (Tadashi Imai, 1952) Yamabiko Gakko was the name of a collection of personal stories written by the students of an elementary school in a mountain village. The teacher who collected the stories belonged to a movement that sought to promote truly democratic education in post-war Japan, focusing on both practical education and personal development. Imai's film is based on these stories -- and shows the methods used and the response of both children and their families to the educational program. While not a documentary, the film has very much the look and feel on being one. There is no plot as such, but one persistent thread deals with a good student who is often absent due to the illness of his mother. After she dies, he writes a story about her life -- and his classmates work together to illustrate and publish the story (using a mimeograph and wood block printing). An earnest and somewhat didactic film, but not an over-earnest or ...

Only one actual movie to report: Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko / Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994) Despite the fact that the subtitles call the creatures who star in this cartoon epic of forest animals fighting encroaching development "raccoons", they are really "raccoon dogs" ("tanuki" in Japanese): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Dog This is probably the hardest of all Ghibli films for Western audiences to come to terms with. It is unabashedly culturally specific -- and probably a comprehensive annotated booklet would be quite helpful for Western viewers. that said, the basic outline of the story is simple enough. T anuki living in the Tama Hills on the outskirts of Tokyo in the mid-1960s find their habitat being bulldozed and leveled. Being the most magical of Japanese animals (along with foxes), they fight back -- using all their skills (which include shape changing). T he effectiveness of their defense is undermined, from time totime, by their indol...