Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2010

Photo ©Daguerreo Shuppan. All rights reserved

The Russian-French coproduction Le Concert (2009) will screen from April 17 at Shibuya’s Le Cinema (03-3477-9111 www.bunkamura.co.jp) and Ginza’s Cine Switch (03-3561-0707 www.cineswitch.com). The film tells the fictional story of a renowned conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra who is blacklisted for political reasons by the communist government before staging his musical comeback in Paris

Critical theory meets film history as The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) gets a screening at Image Forum in Shibuya (03-5766-0116 www.imageforum.co.jp). The documentary is written and hosted by psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who uses films from The Wizard of Oz to Mulholland Drive to illustrate philosophical concepts. Žižek, the closest the philosophy world has to a rock star, makes this a surprisingly fun outing. From April 24.

The National Film Center in Kyobashi (03-5777-8600; www.momat.go.jp) continues its series Japanese Literature in Film through May 6. Highlights include Japan Sinks (1973), based on a novel by Sakyo Komatsu and considered a classic in the disaster flick genre, as well as the 10-hour epic anti-war trilogy The Human Condition (1959-61), which is, thankfully, being shown in installments over three days.