Anime Masterpieces is an educational series aimed at promoting the art of Japanese animation via screenings of classic anime features and panel discussions.  Our events are completely scalable.  Whether your organization is a large museum or a small classroom, we can help you customize our program offerings to suit your needs and budget.  Highlights of our programming include:

Screenings events accompanied by panels and talkbacks featuring leading scholars of cinema, history, and popular culture, as well as anime creators and industry insiders.  Our pool of panelists and contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John W. Dower and Japanese pop culture scholar Roland Kelts.  Travel coordination and event planning may also be included. 
>> Click here to see our list of contributors

Study Guides commissioned for each film in our series featuring original essays by our notable contributors and colorful imagery from the films.  Our Study Guides put a wealth of knowledge about the history, context, and meanings of the films in the hands of each viewer who attends a screening event.

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Our current feature is Tekkonkinkreet, an award-winning anime feature film directed by Michael Arias. Adapted from Black and White, a three-volume seinen manga series by Taiyo Matsumoto, Tekkonkinkreet centers on a pair of orphaned street kids—the tough, canny Kuro (Black) and the childish but mysteriously intuitive Shiro (White)—as they deal with Yakuza attempting to take over Takara Machi (Treasure Town). Tekkonkinkreet is a pun on “tekkin concrete,” the Japanese term for reinforced concrete; it suggests the opposition of the concrete city against the strength of imagination.

A groundbreaking American/Japanese collaboration, Tekkonkinkreet won the 2008 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, the Grand Prix award at the Anima 2008 festival, the prestigious Best Film Award at the 2006 Mainichi Film Awards, and was named the number one film of 2006 in the annual “Best of” roundup by Artforum magazine.

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Tekkonkinkreet © Taiyo Matsumoto/Shogakukan Inc.

I grew up being away from my parents, and I always wanted to run away from the place, which I suppose may have influenced my work on Tekkonkinkreet.  [In creating the screenplay, Anthony Weintraub and I] used to have good chats about things unrelated to work...such as family and music.  I like him a lot.  [As I do not know anything about screenwriting,] I left it all in his hands."--Taiyo Matsumoto

April 15, 2009: 
Tekkonkinkreet screening and panel
Elizabethtown College
Speaker: Frederik L. Schodt
More info


Past events:

March 3-5, 2009:
Tekkonkinkreet Screening & Panel
The Fisher Center for the Study of Women and Men at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY
Panelists: Roland Kelts and Tekkonkinkreet screenwriter Anthony Weintraub

Tekkonkinkreet ©2006 Taiyo Matsumoto/Shogakukan, Aniplex, Asmik Ace, Beyond C, dentsu, TOKYO MX. Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Inc.

Anime Masterpieces
226 West 47th Street, Suite 900
New York, NY 10036
Phone: 212-398-7145 Fax: 212-398-7146
www.animemasterpieces.com
©2008 Gorgeous Entertainment