As part of their tribute to Hayao Miyazaki, the Lone Star Film Society will present two screenings of Spirited Away. 

Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece was the biggest box office hit of all time in Japan and a film that helped redefine the possibilities of animation for American audiences and a generation of new filmmakers.

Wandering through an abandoned carnival site, ten-year-old Chichiro is separated from her parents and stumbles into a dream-like spirit world where she is put to work in a bathhouse for the gods, a place where all kinds of nonhuman beings come to refresh, relax and recharge. Here she encounters a vast menagerie of impossibly inventive characters — shape-shifting phantoms and spirits, some friendly, some less so—and must find the inner strength to outsmart her captors and return to her family. Combining Japanese mythology with Through the Looking Glass-type whimsy, Spirited Away cemented Miyazaki’s reputation as an icon of inspired animation and wondrous, lyrical storytelling.

The late night screening on August 15 will be in Japanese with English subtitles, while the afternoon screening on August 16 will be the English-dubbed version.

The Lone Star Film Society’s ArthouseFW joins the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in celebrating the art of Japanese film director, animator, mangaka, illustrator, producer, and screenwriter, Hayao Miyasaki. Throughout a career that has spanned six decades, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and brilliant creator of anime feature films.  Along with Isao Takahata, he co-founded Studio Ghibli, the famed Japanese film and animation studio. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park, and American director Steven Spielberg. He is considered one of the most popular and influential animators in the history of cinema.