Paprika

In a very near future, a group of scientists have invented a machine that can control our dreams. The plan is for this machine to allow psychiatrists to enter the dreams of their patients in order to better understand and treat them. But the machine is stolen. To solve the mystery and save humanity, Dr. Atsuko Chiba has to enter the dreamworld as het alter ego detective Paprika to stop the dream terrorist from altering our minds.

With PAPRIKA, director Satoshi Kon created a visionary story that moves along the boundary of reality and imagination. Disturbing imagination. The film is based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutui. Due to productional problems it took years before Kon was able to produce the film, but the story constantly roamed in his mind. Kon’s fascination with the thin line between reality and illusion, between memory and fact, fuelled all of his work but culminated in his magnum opus PAPRIKA, which would also become his final film.

PAPRIKA’s plot is mind-bending, interwoven, meta. A marching band made up of frogs, dolls and robots, a parade of inanimate objects… the line between dream and nightmare is blurred and unstable. In PAPRIKA dream and reality are constantly and unexpectedly switched. The safety of being able to determinate what is real and what isn’t, is completely lost. Kon’s cinematic universe was an inspiration to many other filmmakers, not in the least Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION.

Drawing the storyboard for the film took a year and a half. Kon’s trademark is his stunning imagery filled with spectacular visuals. Before Kon made the switch to film, he was a manga artist, but he felt his imagination to be limited by the static form. His comics were noticed by Katsuhiro Otomo and Kon was hired on the set of Otomo’s cyberpunk dystopia AKIRA. Thus, his story as a filmmaker began and in 1997 he debuted with PERFECT BLUE (part of our programme on 4 October). Kon knew what he wanted: a medium where moving images, colour, sound (think of composer Susumu Hirasawa’s iconic Vocaloid soundtrack for PAPRIKA) came together, so he could manipulate his audience’s imagination and could give free rein to his own

This year, in collaboration with Grafixx (20–22 Nov, De Studio & De Cinema), we are putting three films in the spotlight, each of which explores the power of imagination and the creative potential of the visual medium in its own way. Alongside this animated film, DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT and CRUMB explore the lives and work of two distinctive cartoonists, John Callahan and Robert Crumb.