Creator of some of the most breathtakingly beautiful films in the history of animation, including SPIRITED AWAY, PRINCESS MONONOKE, LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, Japanese director and animator Hayao Miyazaki has combined ageless, mythic storytelling, a profoundly spiritual approach to man and the natural world, and a gallery of fearless young heroines into his own unmistakable art. Born in 1941 in Tokyo, the son of an airplane manufacturer (Miyazaki’s love for planes and flying shows in almost all his films), he grew up influenced by writers such as Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Rosemary Sutcliff, and the tremendously popular manga comics of Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro-Boy. After apprenticing on a number of anime features and TV series in the late 1960s and 1970s, Miyazaki emerged as a director with CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO in 1979, followed soon after by the astonishing NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (based on his own manga) and LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY. Working with his own animation house, Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki has exerted an amazing degree of individual control over the design and production of his films. Join us at the Aero for the magic of Miyazaki’s classic films on the big screen, a delight for the whole family!

NAUSICAA, VALLEY OF THE WIND (KAZE NO TANI NO NAUSHIKA), 1984, Walt Disney, 116 min. This first of many triumphs for Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki chronicles the penultimate denouement between the last bastions of humanity a thousand years after a nuclear holocaust has gutted the globe. After the death of her father and an attack from the hostile Tormekia, Princess Nausicaa must unite her people against the threat of annihilation. Using her uncanny ability to communicate with the giant crustacean Ohmu, Nausicaa must find a way to unite her people and avert apocalypse. Based on the manga of the same name, and using Miyazaki’s distinct stylistic flare for the dreamlike and fantastical. It also inaugurates Miyazaki’s enduring collaboration and friendship with composer Joe Hisaishi. It is a visually breathtaking glimpse of truly dexterous animation that is more than worthy of a repeat viewing, let alone a first.

Saturday, February 2 – 3:00 PM

Family Matinee!

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (TONARI NO TOTORO), 1988, Walt Disney, 86 min. The third Studio Ghibli feature from former Toei animator cum writer, producer, director and entrepreneur Hayao Miyazaki. The story of two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe, who move into a new house with their father, near a vast forest to be closer to their ailing, hospitalized mother. Discovering wondrous forest spirits and dust-bunnies, they also encounter Totoro, a giant lumbering bunny-esque creature. "Here is a children's film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO has become one of the most beloved of all family films without ever having been much promoted or advertised." -- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times