The Japanese Paper Film Project
@kamifirumu.bsky.social
The Japanese Paper Film Project preserves 1930s Japanese paper films (紙フィルム or "kami firumu") and promotes research into these rare movies.
kamifirumu.scholar.bucknell.edu
kamifirumu.scholar.bucknell.edu
A great show in Sydney! Plus koala! Thank you Art Gallery of NSW and Japan Foundation (japanesefilmfestival.net) for helping turn out the audience for this sold out event. Melbourne is next with a show at ACMI on Nov. 27! #film #Japan #anime #koto
November 24, 2025 at 5:55 AM
A great show in Sydney! Plus koala! Thank you Art Gallery of NSW and Japan Foundation (japanesefilmfestival.net) for helping turn out the audience for this sold out event. Melbourne is next with a show at ACMI on Nov. 27! #film #Japan #anime #koto
Thank you Brisbane & QAGOMA for hosting our screening! What an amazing audience. A special note of appreciation to curator Robert Hughes for organizing our visit. Duo Yumeno were fantastic & we loved the James Turrell artwork outside the Gallery. Sydney is up next for the Japanese Film Festival.
November 20, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Thank you Brisbane & QAGOMA for hosting our screening! What an amazing audience. A special note of appreciation to curator Robert Hughes for organizing our visit. Duo Yumeno were fantastic & we loved the James Turrell artwork outside the Gallery. Sydney is up next for the Japanese Film Festival.
Hello Brisbane! Join us tonight at the Gallery of Modern Art. The whole team arrived smoothly from the U.S. and we're excited to share our program of Japanese paper films. Duo Yumeno provides live musical accompaniment on koto & cello. #anime #Japan #film
japanesefilmfestival.net/paper-films/
japanesefilmfestival.net/paper-films/
November 19, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Hello Brisbane! Join us tonight at the Gallery of Modern Art. The whole team arrived smoothly from the U.S. and we're excited to share our program of Japanese paper films. Duo Yumeno provides live musical accompaniment on koto & cello. #anime #Japan #film
japanesefilmfestival.net/paper-films/
japanesefilmfestival.net/paper-films/
Come to our Yale screening by car, boat, train, hot air balloon, turtle, tanuki, horse, motorcycle, skis, rocket or just run! As always, Duo Yumeno (Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto and Hikaru Tamaki on cello) provide live musical accompaniment.
Details: film.yale.edu/events/2025-...
Details: film.yale.edu/events/2025-...
October 22, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Come to our Yale screening by car, boat, train, hot air balloon, turtle, tanuki, horse, motorcycle, skis, rocket or just run! As always, Duo Yumeno (Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto and Hikaru Tamaki on cello) provide live musical accompaniment.
Details: film.yale.edu/events/2025-...
Details: film.yale.edu/events/2025-...
Hello from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival! We loved seeing Japanese paper films projected onto the Teatro Verdi theatre to promote our screening. Props to Phoebe for b-roll of Yoko, Hikaru, & Eric capturing the moment! A big THANK YOU to the Yanai Initiative for supporting our screening here.
October 6, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Hello from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival! We loved seeing Japanese paper films projected onto the Teatro Verdi theatre to promote our screening. Props to Phoebe for b-roll of Yoko, Hikaru, & Eric capturing the moment! A big THANK YOU to the Yanai Initiative for supporting our screening here.
I love paper films' materiality, especially in an age where digital streams have largely replaced physical media. When color grading, I always look at the beginning of the filmstrip and darken it to reveal the ridges and spirals of fingerprints from those who handled the films 90+ years ago.
September 30, 2025 at 5:48 PM
I love paper films' materiality, especially in an age where digital streams have largely replaced physical media. When color grading, I always look at the beginning of the filmstrip and darken it to reveal the ridges and spirals of fingerprints from those who handled the films 90+ years ago.
Land ho! Tonkichi's Adventure is a charming anime where nothing is as it seems.
September 20, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Land ho! Tonkichi's Adventure is a charming anime where nothing is as it seems.
Sharing from Instagram: we're beyond thrilled to play the Pordenone Silent Film Festival next month in Italy. A truly magical venue and event. #japan, #anime, #silentcinema
September 20, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Sharing from Instagram: we're beyond thrilled to play the Pordenone Silent Film Festival next month in Italy. A truly magical venue and event. #japan, #anime, #silentcinema
Philly, New Jersey, and NYC friends: new program premiering next week at Lafayette's Williams Center for the Arts on Sept. 12 at 7pm. Ticket's here:
williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...
As usual, Duo Yumeno joins us for live musical accompaniment!
williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...
As usual, Duo Yumeno joins us for live musical accompaniment!
September 7, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Philly, New Jersey, and NYC friends: new program premiering next week at Lafayette's Williams Center for the Arts on Sept. 12 at 7pm. Ticket's here:
williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...
As usual, Duo Yumeno joins us for live musical accompaniment!
williamscenter.lafayette.edu/event/japane...
As usual, Duo Yumeno joins us for live musical accompaniment!
In case you weren't up at 2am last night to catch the live broadcast from Japan, here's a link to the English news segment from NHK World broadcast on the Japanese Paper Film Project. Thank you to journalist Takatoshi Murakami & his amazing filming crew!
www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...
www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...
September 4, 2025 at 3:56 PM
In case you weren't up at 2am last night to catch the live broadcast from Japan, here's a link to the English news segment from NHK World broadcast on the Japanese Paper Film Project. Thank you to journalist Takatoshi Murakami & his amazing filming crew!
www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...
www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...
This summer NHK (Japan's national TV network) produced a great news segment on our project that broadcast in July & re-aired in August. They've now made an English version for NHK World. If you find yourself awake tonight at 2am (EST), then watch it live: www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...
September 3, 2025 at 5:14 PM
This summer NHK (Japan's national TV network) produced a great news segment on our project that broadcast in July & re-aired in August. They've now made an English version for NHK World. If you find yourself awake tonight at 2am (EST), then watch it live: www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...
Beware of speedy turtles! Suihō Tagawa's Norakuro was a popular manga character in the 1930s who also appears in several paper films. We scanned an incomplete version of this film in 2024 but collector Natsuki Matsumoto found a complete version which we scanned this summer in Japan.
September 2, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Beware of speedy turtles! Suihō Tagawa's Norakuro was a popular manga character in the 1930s who also appears in several paper films. We scanned an incomplete version of this film in 2024 but collector Natsuki Matsumoto found a complete version which we scanned this summer in Japan.
New 2025 cut of our live roadshow program is done! New subtitles, fixed a lot of little (and sometimes big) mistakes, typos, random frames that crept into the cut, improved the Japanese, and incorporated several new films and/or better preservations of films already in the program!
August 31, 2025 at 8:54 PM
New 2025 cut of our live roadshow program is done! New subtitles, fixed a lot of little (and sometimes big) mistakes, typos, random frames that crept into the cut, improved the Japanese, and incorporated several new films and/or better preservations of films already in the program!
Like so many paper films, this one begs for more research. This film - along with several others - targets (in an admittedly stereotyped way) 1930s Japanese girls & young women. Other films (like the Sutakora Sacchan films), however, upend gender norms. A book chapter/journal article awaits!
August 23, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Like so many paper films, this one begs for more research. This film - along with several others - targets (in an admittedly stereotyped way) 1930s Japanese girls & young women. Other films (like the Sutakora Sacchan films), however, upend gender norms. A book chapter/journal article awaits!
Back to work on new films. We scanned Prof. Yo Sato's collection this summer including the Japanese folktale "Battle of Monkey & Crab." Like most Japanese folktales ... it's complicated: there's onigiri, persimmons, a crustacean tragedy, & vengeance with bees, chestnuts, and a quasi-human mortar.
August 18, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Back to work on new films. We scanned Prof. Yo Sato's collection this summer including the Japanese folktale "Battle of Monkey & Crab." Like most Japanese folktales ... it's complicated: there's onigiri, persimmons, a crustacean tragedy, & vengeance with bees, chestnuts, and a quasi-human mortar.
We always travel with musicians Yoko Reikano Kimura & Hikaru Tamaki but our Japan tour also had benshi Ichiro Kataoka & Kumiko Omori. Benshi were star Japanese film narrators popular in the 1920s & 1930s. Some paper film soundtracks include benshi so it was an honor to have live benshi on the tour.
August 4, 2025 at 8:22 PM
We always travel with musicians Yoko Reikano Kimura & Hikaru Tamaki but our Japan tour also had benshi Ichiro Kataoka & Kumiko Omori. Benshi were star Japanese film narrators popular in the 1920s & 1930s. Some paper film soundtracks include benshi so it was an honor to have live benshi on the tour.
The current issue of MUBI's NOTEBOOK magazine (issue #7, "Threshold of the Visible") features a GEORGEOUS profile on our project. NOTEBOOK is a print-only, biannual magazine where each issue is a bespoke design and layout based on the content. Pick up a copy or subscribe: mubi.com/en/notebook/...
July 30, 2025 at 2:15 PM
The current issue of MUBI's NOTEBOOK magazine (issue #7, "Threshold of the Visible") features a GEORGEOUS profile on our project. NOTEBOOK is a print-only, biannual magazine where each issue is a bespoke design and layout based on the content. Pick up a copy or subscribe: mubi.com/en/notebook/...
One of the film's screened during our summer tour was Seven Little Lambs. Here's a G-rated part of the film but things turn dark quickly when the wolf eats the lambs and then the mother sheep seeks revenge. 1930s fairy tales don't pull any punches!
July 29, 2025 at 6:44 PM
One of the film's screened during our summer tour was Seven Little Lambs. Here's a G-rated part of the film but things turn dark quickly when the wolf eats the lambs and then the mother sheep seeks revenge. 1930s fairy tales don't pull any punches!
Whoa! It's been awhile! We've been super busy this summer touring Japan and scanning new films. We'll start with this amazing picture drawn by our research students Yara Polusmak and Mikaru Plankenhorn for Kyoto's Toy Film Museum's guest book. We were visiting the museum's new location!
July 29, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Whoa! It's been awhile! We've been super busy this summer touring Japan and scanning new films. We'll start with this amazing picture drawn by our research students Yara Polusmak and Mikaru Plankenhorn for Kyoto's Toy Film Museum's guest book. We were visiting the museum's new location!
Our 2025 Japan summer tour (details coming soon!) needs high resolution images of paper film strips for the theatrical posters. So we shot some tests using a 100 megapixel camera. The paper film frame is just 27mm but the 100MP image reveals individual paper fibers!
April 28, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Our 2025 Japan summer tour (details coming soon!) needs high resolution images of paper film strips for the theatrical posters. So we shot some tests using a 100 megapixel camera. The paper film frame is just 27mm but the 100MP image reveals individual paper fibers!
Most days working on Japanese paper films is staring at three monitors painstakingly working on films frame by frame to bring them back to life. But for one week a year, if I rotate my chair to the right, I get my own Pennsylvania version of sakura season.
April 21, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Most days working on Japanese paper films is staring at three monitors painstakingly working on films frame by frame to bring them back to life. But for one week a year, if I rotate my chair to the right, I get my own Pennsylvania version of sakura season.
More photos . . .
April 15, 2025 at 3:34 PM
More photos . . .
A clip from Ponsuke's Shapeshifting Training from our LA rehearsal at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theatre. Thank you to everyone who came to the show and to the UCLA Film/TV Archive. As always, Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto and Hikaru Tamaki on cell were amazing.
April 15, 2025 at 3:34 PM
A clip from Ponsuke's Shapeshifting Training from our LA rehearsal at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theatre. Thank you to everyone who came to the show and to the UCLA Film/TV Archive. As always, Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto and Hikaru Tamaki on cell were amazing.
Great show in Santa Barbara yesterday. Thank you to everyone who came out and thank you to the Carsey-Wolf Center for hosting us. Here's a short clip of the amazing Hikaru Tamaki (cello) and Yoko Reikano Kimura (koto).
Tonight: Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theatre. Join us!
Tonight: Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theatre. Join us!
April 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Great show in Santa Barbara yesterday. Thank you to everyone who came out and thank you to the Carsey-Wolf Center for hosting us. Here's a short clip of the amazing Hikaru Tamaki (cello) and Yoko Reikano Kimura (koto).
Tonight: Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theatre. Join us!
Tonight: Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theatre. Join us!