San Francisco Metro: Sat, Nov 7, 2026 · Film & Screening · East Bay · 2 events · data version 20261021-173303
2:30 PM · Kwaidan · Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley) · film · rating 6
bampfa.org · details Breathtakingly photographed on hand-painted sets, Kwaidan is at once a Japanese woodcut writ large, and an abstract wash of luminescent colors that seem to come from another world. An electronic soundtrack by avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu plays hauntingly with natural sounds—crickets, rain, the cracking of wood, the loud silence of snow. Yet the stories—four of Lafcadio Hearn’s ghostly tales—strangely contradict this plastic splendor in their simple, aching humanity.
6:30 PM · The Sword · Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley) · film · rating 6
bampfa.org · details An ambitious swordsman looking to bolster his reputation hunts for an older master to defeat in a duel. On his quest, he gets embroiled with a young woman chased by bandits (no slouch with a sword herself), his childhood sweetheart (unhappily married into wealth), and a cursed, evil sword. Patrick Tam’s iconoclastic convictions are already apparent in this feature debut: “Martial arts films give an impression of being conventional; I wanted to push the envelope in visual experiment.”