The Harvard Film Archive, in partnership with the Reischauer Institute, is hosting a special film series "Planet at 50" (April 11 – May 9, 2025), which celebrates the monumental contributions of the Kobe Planet Film Archive to cinema history as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

A legendary institution and one of the largest private film archives in Japan, Planet by now stores almost 20,000 film prints along with huge amounts of additional material such as film posters, scripts and rare publications. Famous well beyond Japan, it has become a must-visit institution for film archivists, researchers and film festival programmers from all over the world.

Started in 1974 by its director Yasui Yoshio and several other enthusiasts as the Planet Bibliothèque de Cinéma in Osaka, it opened its first screening space in Osaka in 1995, followed by an additional movie theater in Kobe in 2007. Dedicated to the art of film in all its forms, the archive collects feature films, avant-garde documentaries, indie cinema, home movies, animation, pink film, silent film rarities and anything else from (not only) the rich history of Japanese cinema. It is also now a central gathering space for film researchers and historians to hold conferences and workshops, with Yasui himself having edited one of the definitive early works on the history of animation in Japan. Not simply an archive, Planet is a vibrant and internationally networked center of film education and research, and this series presents a small selection of fascinating works from the treasure trove that Planet has amassed over the decades. (Description by Alexander Zahlten)

For more information about the series and its screening schedule, please visit the Harvard Film Archive website.