Zipangu Fest Triple Creature Double Feature: King Kong vs. Godzilla And Matango, Fungus of Terror

Zipangu Fest and Cigarette Burns Cinema present a Creature Feature Double Bill in 35mm and full extra widescreen TohoScope!

Date: Wednesday August 22nd 2012

Location: Prince Charles Cinema, London

The UK’s favourite Japanese film festival bursts back into 2012 with a monstrous retro kaiju double bill collaboration with independent cult cinema exhibitor Cigarette Burns Cinema.

On Wednesday August 22nd 2012, horror, sci-fi and kaiju fans can catch this unique screening of both King Kong vs. Godzilla and Matango, Fungus of Terror, both showing in their English language versions, at the Prince Charles Cinema in Central London.

This double whammy from the legendary director Ishiro Honda, creator of Godzilla and the mastermind behind some of Japan’s most inventive and memorable apocalyptic visions, will be a unique opportunity to enjoy both films as they were meant to be seen, on 35mm and in full widescreen TohoScope, on one of London’s biggest screens.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) sees the world’s two most monumental movie monsters go head-to-head, slugging it out in their first ever colour widescreen outing. The film remains the most commercially successful of all the Godzilla films to date.

Matango, Fungus of Terror (1963), a hallucinogenic horror adapted from the 1907 short story “The Voice in the Night” by the English author William Hope Hodgson, follows a yacht full of privileged Tokyo-ites who are forced to face their primordial selves after they find themselves washed up on deserted tropical island festooned with clumps of fungus.

This Triple Creature Double Feature programme is sponsored by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, and will travel to a number of venues around the UK following its London opening.

The screenings from 35mm prints will pave the way for one of the main themes of Zipangu Fest 2012, to be held at The Cinema Museum in Kennington, South London, from September 14th to 16th. The Reel Zipangu strand will celebrate the legacy of celluloid in a rapidly digitalising world.

The full programme of Zipangu Fest 2012 will be announced at the Prince Charles screenings on August 22nd 2012.

For more details, visit the official website at http://zipangufest.com.

Matango, Fungus of Terror

About Zipangu Fest
Zipangu Fest is a non-profit organization created in 2010 to bring the best of Japanese cinema to the UK. Its unique and independent brand of curation paints a multi-faceted portrait of Japan in the form of rare or previously unseen gems from some of the country’s most exciting and revered talents. Outside of the main London-based festival, Zipangu Fest tours its programme to several cities across the UK.

About the Festival Director
Jasper Sharp is an internationally renowned writer and curator based in the UK. He has curated high-profile seasons and retrospectives at the British Film Institute, the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, as well as Austin Fantastic Fest, Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, Wroclaw’s New Horizons Festival, and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. He is the co-founder of the Shinsedai New Generation Japanese Cinema Festival in Toronto. His writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines across the world. In 2001 he co-founded the website Midnight Eye, the premier English language resource on Japanese cinema with film critic Tom Mes, with whom he also co-authored The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film. He has also published an award-winning study of the Japanese pink film industry Behind the Pink Curtain, and his latest work, The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema is now available from Scarecrow Press. More on his work can be found at http://jaspersharp.com.

About Cigarette Burns Cinema
Cigarette Burns Cinema is the brainchild of henshin warrior, Josh Saco. Unravelling reels of often forgotten, but much loved cult films for the silver screens across London. Specialising in Italian gialli, international horror and kaiju insanity.

Links
The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation http://www.gbsf.org.uk
Cigarette Burns Cinema http://www.cigaretteburnscinema.com
Prince Charles Cinema http://www.princecharlescinema.com/
The Cinema Museum http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/

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