Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2010

© Screen Runner

World music fans will want to hit up Shibuya’s Image Forum (2-10-2 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku; www.imageforum.co.jp) for the inspiring documentary Benda Bilili! (2010; pictured). Directors Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye spent five years filming Staff Benda Bilili, a group of street musicians, handicapped by childhood bouts of polio, who ride through the slums of the Congolese capital of Kinshasa in self-customized tricycles. In the course of filming, the band took on a teenage member who plays an extraordinary instrument made from a tin can and a guitar string. The group also achieved international recognition for their debut album, which was recorded in the grounds of a public zoo.

The Festival de Cinema Português 2010 will be held from September 17-October 3 at the National Film Center in Kyobashi (3-7-6 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku; www.momat.go.jp). The lineup features films by key directors including Pedro Costa and Manoel de Oliveira, the stalwart of Portuguese cinema who is still directing at the age of 101. See www.jc3.jp/portugal2010 for more info.

Arthouse theater Laputa in Asagaya (1-12-21 Kita-Asagaya, Suginami-ku; www.laputa-jp.com) is running a late-night series of films about Japanese strippers, through October 1. Stripteases became a popular form of entertainment during the postwar period, and movies about characters working as erotic dancers were popular throughout the ’60s and ’70s. The lineup includes Gypsy Rose (1974), the biopic of a dancer known as “The Japanese Marilyn Monroe.”

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