ANIME SERIES: AFTER NATURE
ANIME SERIES: AFTER NATURE
Five Japanese anime spanning four decades (1984–2024) explore how ecology, technology, memory, and climate reshape the worlds we inhabit.
After Nature begins with a simple question: How should we understand our relationship with the environments we inhabit in the twenty-first century?
What do we mean when we say nature? Is it a place apart—a refuge from the city, a landscape of restoration and recreation? Or is nature something we have always imagined and constructed through culture? How does that relationship change when climate instability challenges our sense of a predictable landscape, when the boundaries between city and nature become increasingly porous, and when technology, memory, and dreams shape the worlds we inhabit as profoundly as forests, oceans, and mountains?
Rather than offering answers, After Nature invites us to reconsider where nature begins, where it ends, and what it means to belong in a world where the boundaries between nature, the city, technology, and ourselves are no longer so easily drawn. Programmed by WLA Sawtelle Neighborhood Council.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND
風の谷のナウシカ
DIR: HAYAO MIYAZAKI
1984 [PG]
FRI 08.07.26 | 8 PM
STONER PARK
A climate fable that asks what it means to live in a world where nature is no longer predictable. A thousand years after the Seven Days of Fire destroyed civilization, warring human factions survive on a poisoned earth, devastated by atmospheric poisons and swarming with gigantic insects. The peaceful Valley of the Wind sits at the edge of the Toxic Forest, led by the courageous Princess Nausicaä, whose love of all living things leads her into terrible danger as she fights to find a way for humans and nature to survive each other.
ORDER: https://tinyurl.com/55znmsma
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO
となりのトトロ
DIR: HAYAO MIYAZAKI
1988 [G]
FRI 08.14.26 | 8 PM
STONER PARK
A gentle fable of childhood, where nature becomes a place to imagine, to hide, and to remember. When Satsuki and her sister Mei move with their father to a new home in the countryside, they find country life is not as simple as it seems. They soon discover that the house and nearby woods are full of strange and delightful creatures, including a gigantic but gentle forest spirit called Totoro, who can only be seen by children.
ORDER: https://tinyurl.com/4yfu6rtb
Look Back (2024)
LOOK BACK ルックバック
DIR: KIYOTAKA OSHIYAMA
2024 [PG-13]
FRI 08.21.26 | 8 PM
STONER PARK
When a moment of artistic transformation and triumph, and the beauty of landscape, become one. Fujino has been the best young artist in her school for years — until a reclusive classmate named Kyomoto submits work that surpasses her own. What begins as rivalry becomes an unlikely partnership, then a friendship built entirely around the act of drawing. Told across more than a decade, Look Back follows two artists whose lives are shaped, broken, and remade by the pages they make.
ORDER: https://tinyurl.com/pbpamm9e
Weathering with You (2019)
WEATHERING WITH YOU 天気の子
DIR: MAKOTO SHINKAI
2019 [PG-13]
FRI 08.28.26 | 8 PM
STONER PARK
A meteorological love story — where one girl's emotional landscape reshapes the sky above an entire city. Hodaka, a runaway from his remote island home, arrives in Tokyo and quickly finds himself pushed to his limits. There, on a busy street corner, he meets Hina — a bright, strong-willed girl with a strange and wonderful ability: to turn what she feels into the weather.
ORDER: https://tinyurl.com/2mycwb92
Paprika (2006)
SPECIAL SCREENING
PAPRIKA パプリカ
DIR: SATOSHI KON
2006 [R]
FRI 09.04.26 | 8 PM
TO BE ANNOUNCED
In the near future, where boundaries between nature and technology, dream and reality, and the self, have dissolved —a revolutionary psychotherapy allows psychiatrists to enter patients' dreams to treat mental disorders. Researcher Atsuko Chiba uses her dream alter ego, Paprika, to heal patients, while her colleague Kōsaku Tokita invents the DC Mini, a portable device that makes dream entry possible. Unrest ensues when the new psychotherapy device is stolen, allowing the assailant to enter the mind of anyone and enact mind control. The frantic search for the criminal and the DC Mini has begun.
TICKETS:
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The Anime Series is a free public screening series presenting beloved classics and contemporary discoveries for teens, young adults, and fans of animation and film. Family Night is a free outdoor series celebrating imagination, creativity, and community through family-friendly evenings in the park. Programmed by the WLA Sawtelle Neighborhood Council and Stoner Park.
