Birkbeck Cinema, Saturday 29th September 2018: 14:00 – 17:00
Free entrance, book your tickets here.

In Japan fortune telling is as ubiquitous as counceling in the west. On the surface people visit spiritual mediums, clairvoyances, palm readers etc. to ask for help, to talk about their future. In reality they just need somebody to speak to and get the second opinion. Whether they believe in the source of information is irrelevant. Therefore, who are the fortune tellers and how they cope with the burden of somebody else’s problems? Do they have their own issues? Who are they really? How do they deal with their own future?

The movie consists of 3 main separate stories told by different Japanese fortune tellers. The short academic explanation of the practice and history is provided by the owner of Japan’s top fortune telling school Mr. Morinobu. The overall narration is provided by a fortune-telling veteran and spiritual researcher Chazz who has educated many major fortune-tellers in Tokyo.

Q&A with the filmmaker Adam Buczek follws the screening.

Chair: Marcos Centeno (Birkbeck)

Director

Adam Buczek is a Polish artist, photographer and writer currently living in Tokyo, Japan. He graduated with an MA in Social and Cultural Animation in Film and Photography from the University of Zielona Gora, and also holds an MA in Applied Imagination from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. Adam has had many exhibitions all over the world in the fields of photography, photo-installations, performance art, video art and interactive art and has featured in major displays across Europe, including London Photo Month, National Centres for Contemporary Arts in Yekaterinburg and Moscow, Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art, Media Art Friesland in the Netherlands, Japanese Salon of Photography just to name few.