Tuesday | February 7, 2006 9:00 pm

Fires on the Plain
(Nobi)

Screening on Film

Directed by Kon Ichikawa.
With Eiji Funakoshi, Osama Takizawa, Mickey Curtis.
Japan, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 108 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

Fires on the Plain takes place at the end of World War II as a desperate group of sick and starving Japanese soldiers hide in the jungles of the Philippines. The film focuses on Private Tamura (Funakoshi) as he faces tuberculosis, insanity, demoralization, murder and cannibalism while he struggles to survive to the end of the war with his morality intact. Brutally realistic and disturbingly graphic, Fires on the Plain carries a powerful anti-war message.