The history of Japan is told through their unique music cafes, where audiophiles meet to listen to the music they love.
Music is not just a way to pass the time, it’s reactive – responding to the culture in which it is created and consumed. In Tu Neill and Nick Dwyer’s wonderfully immersive film we don’t just meet the fanatic music lovers who visit music cafes, known as Ongaku Kissa, and encounter the charismatic personalities who run them, we engage with key periods of history: the influx of western culture in the post-war era, the student protests and armed Marxists movements of the 1960s, and the economic bubble of the 1980s. A Century in Sound gives us one hundred years in the history of Japan from the perspective of three unique Ongaku Kissa, each one home to music that defined those periods: classical, jazz and rock. The obsessive atmosphere of the cafes bleeds into each scene, making for a film that is, by turns, meditative, exciting and refreshingly original.
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Strands
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Topics
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Premiere statusUK premiere
Film details
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Director(s)Nick Dwyer, Tuataroa Rapana Neill
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Country(s)Japan
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Year2024
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Duration106 mins
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Executive producer(s)Roman Coppola, Kasper Collin, Dana O’Keefe, Dan Braun / Submarine
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Producer(s)Nick Dwyer
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CinematographyTimothy Flower
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EditingTuataroa Rapana Neill
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SoundJeffrey Jousan
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Language(s)Japanese
