West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, July 21, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.qbr.com
Kicking off with the inaugural Literacy Across Harlem march, in which participants carry their favorite book, the Harlem Book Fair features a full day of activities celebrating the written word. Taking place at such venues as the Countee Cullen Library, the Langston Hughes Auditorium and the American Negro Theater in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the main stage outdoors on West 135th St., the fair will include live performances and readings by Lynn Pinder, Mitzi Carrasquillo, Elijah Brown, Sadequ Johnson, Danny Simmons, Renarda Huggins, Atiba Wilson & the Befo’ Quotet, Eleanor Wells, and others. Among the panel discussions and lectures are “Decision 2012: Race, Democracy, and the New Jim Crow” with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Cornel West, Fredrick C. Harris, and Sonia Sanchez, moderated by Peniel Joseph; “Black to the Future: Why We No Longer Die First in Science Fiction Movies,” with Shykia Bell, Joelle Sterling, R. Kayeen Thomas, and Gregory “Brother G” Walker, moderated by Harlem Book Fair founder Max Rodriguez; and “The End of Anger: Teen Book Talk with Author Ellis Cose.” There will also be a special tribute to Sekou Molefi Baako, with musical guests Mzuri Moyo and Jazz Trio, the Atiba Kwabena Trio, and the NuyoRican School Poetry Jazz Ensemble featuring Americo Casiano Jr. with Edy Martinez, Ray Martinez, & Yunior Terry in addition to poets E. J. Antonio, Cypress Jackson Preston, Tony Mitchelson, and Ed Toney.
Japanese director Takashi Miike’s first foray into the samurai epic is a nearly flawless film, perhaps his most accomplished work. Evoking such classics as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Mizoguchi’s 47 Ronin, Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, and Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, 13 Assassins is a thrilling tale of honor and revenge, inspired by a true story. In mid-nineteenth-century feudal Japan, during a time of peace just prior to the Meiji Restoration, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), the son of the former shogun and half-brother to the current one, is abusing his power, raping and killing at will, even using his servants and their families as target practice with a bow and arrow. Because of his connections, he is officially untouchable, but Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira) secretly hires Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to gather a small team and put an end to Naritsugu’s brutal tyranny. But the lord’s protector, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a former nemesis of Shinzaemon’s, has vowed to defend his master to the death, even though he despises Naritsugu’s actions. As the thirteen samurai make a plan to get to Naritsugu, they are eager to finally break out their long-unused swords and do what they were born to do. “He who values his life dies a dog’s death,” Shinzaemon proclaims, knowing that the task is virtually impossible but willing to die for a just cause. Although there are occasional flashes of extreme gore in the first part of the film, Miike keeps the audience waiting until he unleashes the gripping battle, an extended scene of blood and violence that highlights death before dishonor. Selected for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the Silver Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, 13 Assassins is one of Miike’s best-crafted tales; nominated for ten Japanese Academy Prizes, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Daisuke Tengan), Best Editing (Kenji Yamashita), Best Original Score (Koji Endo), and Best Actor (Yakusho), it won awards for cinematography (Nobuyasu Kita), lighting direction (Yoshiya Watanabe), art direction (Yuji Hayashida), and sound recording (Jun Nakamura). 13 Assassins is screening at Japan Society on July 21 at 8:20 as part of the Japan Cuts sidebar “Focus on Kôji Yakusho” and will be introduced by the actor; the July 20-21 mini-festival also includes such other Yakusho vehicles as his directorial debut, Toad’s Oil, as well as Shuichi Okita’s The Woodsman and the Rain, the New York premiere of Masato Harada’s Chronicle of My Mother, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, and Masayuki Suo’s original Shall We Dance?
Two years ago, Japanese auteur Toshiaki Toyoda presented 
Brazilian filmmaker Eryk Rocha’s feature narrative debut, Transeunte (Passerby), is a beautifully poetic, lyrical examination of loneliness and connection. Fernando Bezerra gives a brilliant performance as Expedito, a sixty-five-year-old man who spends his days in Rio de Janeiro walking the streets and riding buses as he puts flowers on his mother’s grave, picks up his benefits check, takes a nap on his couch, goes to the doctor, listens to his old-fashioned transistor radio, and stops by a bar for a few drinks. A simple man who seems to be content in his small life, Expedito is an innocent bystander in the world; Rocha often cuts to extreme close-ups of Expedito’s eyes as the character watches and listens to other people singing, dancing, preaching, celebrating a birthday, and just having regular conversations as he takes it all in from a distance. He rarely even speaks, saying only what is absolutely necessary as he goes about his daily business. Yet he does all this with a quiet confidence, his deeply chiseled face, rigid brow, and slow gait (in opposition to his name) revealing him to be a simple man with simple pleasures instead of a sad, lonely man leading a nowhere life. Rocha, who has made such documentaries as Rocha que Voa and Pachamama and has also been an editor, actor, composer, and cinematographer (though still only in his thirties), uses that varied background to create a mesmerizing tale that mixes fiction and reality, set to a lively score and shot in a lush black-and-white, recalling such seminal films as Charles Burnett’s