Stream Miss Hokusai (2015)

Presented in partnership with the Utah Film Center, the UMFA will be streaming the 2015 anime film, Miss Hokusai. Stay tuned for more details.

Directed by Keiichi Hara
93 min | 2015 | Japan | PG-13
Cast: Yutaka Matsushige, Anne Watanabe, Erica Lindbeck
Presented in Japanese with English subtitles.

As all of Edo flocks to see the work of the revered painter Hokusai, his daughter O-Ei toils diligently inside his studio. Her masterful portraits, dragons and erotic sketches – sold under the name of her father – are coveted by upper crust Lords and journeyman print makers alike. Shy and reserved in public, in the studio O-Ei is as brash and uninhibited as her father, smoking a pipe while sketching drawings that would make contemporary Japanese ladies blush. But despite this fiercely independent spirit, O-Ei struggles under the domineering influence of her father and is ridiculed for lacking the life experience that she is attempting to portray in her art. Miss Hokusai‘s bustling Edo (present day Tokyo) is filled with yokai spirits, dragons, and conniving tradesmen, while O-Ei’s relationships with her demanding father and blind younger sister provide a powerful emotional underpinning to this sumptuously-animated coming-of-age tale.

Winner: Best Animated Feature–2015 Fantasia Film Festival