As part of their tribute to Hayao Miyazaki, the Lone Star Film Society will present

Princess Mononoke

. 

Princess Mononoke 

is a landmark of animation and a film of unsurpassed power and beauty. An epic story of conflict between humans, gods, and nature, the film has been universally acclaimed by critics and broke the box office record on its original release in Japan.

While defending his village from a demonic boar-god, the young warrior Ashitaka becomes afflicted with a curse that grants him super-human power in battle but will eventually take his life. Traveling west to find a cure or meet his destiny, he journeys deep into sacred depths of the Great Forest where he meets San (Princess Mononoke), a girl raised by wolf-gods who is waging battle against the human outpost of Iron Town, on the edge of the forest. The girl Mononoke is a force of nature—with blood smeared lips, riding bareback on a great white wolf, doing battle with both gods and humans, she is as iconic a figure as any from film, literature, or opera.

Introduction and discussion after the film will be provided by Dr. Marc Hairston. Hairston is a space scientist who researches “space weather” using the “Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI),” a satellite that studies how neutral gas motions and charge particle motions are related.  Dr. Hairston is also interested in the scholarly study of anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) and is on the board of editors of Mechademia, the first English-language academic journal about anime and manga. Along with Prof. Pamela Gossin, Dr. Hairston teaches a lecture at the University of Texas at Dallas titled Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Anime Fantasy of Hayao Miyazaki.

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