His Motorbike, Her Island
Press Play to start
Theatrical Screenings
Kinoteka 1
Kinoteka 1
Film description
After yet another failed relationship, the hot-tempered romantic Ko mounts his Kawasaki W3 650 and rides off with no destination. On one of the islands, he meets Miyo – a girl for whom freedom and speed are as natural as breathing. Their romance is born to the accompaniment of crashing waves and the roar of an engine, from aimless journeys on a motorcycle where nothing matters but the wind in their hair and the presence of another. Yet Miyo’s obsession with speed gradually awakens fear in Ko.
Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, the visionary creator of the cult classic “House”, in his most poetic road movie, offers a fervent love letter to lost youth. From the landscapes of southern Japan, he weaves a mosaic of hypnotic spaces that echo the conviction that youth will last forever. “His Motorbike, Her Island” is a film that throbs with the pulse of summer, where a passionate romance is suffused with the melancholy of passing days and defiance against adulthood. In Japan, it achieved cult status as a hymn to youth rushing forward before anyone can stop it.
The film will be screened in a restored 4K version.
text:
Łukasz Mańkowski
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Nobuhiko Ōbayashi is one of the most peculiar and fascinating figures in Japanese cinema. A visionary, experimenter, master of editing and color, whose work defies simple categorization. He made his debut in the 1970s, immediately gaining cult status thanks to Hausu, a crazy collage of horror, comedy, and surrealism. In the following decades, he created an impressive filmography, combining genre cinema with poetic nostalgia, pop culture, and reflections on memory and transience. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was one of the most important voices in Japanese popular cinema, redefining its language and sensibility while maintaining complete artistic independence. In Poland, his films remain virtually unknown, even though his oeuvre includes dozens of titles that are hugely popular in Japan. Ōbayashi remains an inimitable artist—his cinema is pure energy of imagination, sentimental and anarchic at the same time.
1977 Hausu / House / Dom
1982 Tenkōsei / I Are You, You Am Me
1983 Toki o Kakeru Shōjo / The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
1985 Sabishinbo / Lonely Heart
1986 Jego motor, jej wyspa / Kare no ōtobai, kanojo no shima / His Motorbike, Her Island
1988 Ijin Tachi to no Natsu / The Discarnates
1989 Pekin no Suika / Beijing Watermelon
1998 Sada
2012 Kono sora no hana: Nagaoka hanabi monogatari / Casting Blossoms to the Sky
2014 No no nanananoka / Seven Weeks
2017 Hanagatami
2019 Labyrinth of Cinema
