Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2010

She hasn’t appeared in a film since 1973, but Brigitte Bardot’s blonde tresses and alluring pout are still inextricably linked with classic French cinema. From August 28 through September 28—the actress’ 74th birthday—Shinjuku theater Musashino-kan (3-27-10 Shinjuku; http://shinjuku.musashino-k.jp) pays tribute with screenings of five Bardot films from her heyday in the ’50s. Highlights include …And God Created Woman (1956; pictured), about a young vixen who torments her former lover by marrying his brother, and Plucking the Daisy (1956), in which Bardot plays a ballet dancer moonlighting as a stripper.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is the repository of Dutch national culture, so when a team of international architects began ripping the guts out of the building in 2003, protestors brought the project to a standstill. Seven years later, many masterpieces can only be seen by workers in hard hats. A documentary on the troubled renovation, The New Rijksmuseum (2008), is screening from August 21 at Shibuya’s Eurospace (1-5 Maruyama-cho, Shibuya-ku; www.eurospace.co.jp).

The National Film Center in Kyobashi (3-7-6 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku; www.momat.go.jp) is paying tribute to Japanese animation pioneer Noburo Ofuji from August 20-September 5. Working in the ’20s and ’30s, when celluloid was prohibitively expensive, Ofuji meticulously cut out backgrounds and characters from colored chiyogami paper, giving his work a distinctly “Japanese” feel. Later in his career, the director experimented with bringing live actors and animated characters together onscreen.

Unless noted, Japanese films screen without English subtitles. Non-English-language films are shown with Japanese subtitles only.