Free
It has become a tradition at ENS de Lyon: on the initiative of the Institut d'Asie Orientale (IAO), you are invited to celebrate the Lunar New Year. An opportunity to discover Asian culture during a themed evening.
In 2025, the Lunar New Year falls under the sign of the Wood Snake. To mark this occasion, the Institut d'Asie Orientale invites you to a screening of the 1954 version of Godzilla. This very first film of the famous series is shown in a version that has long remained unknown in the West, overshadowed by the international version, released two years later, in 1956, and stripped of many elements that were sensitive at the time. This film, directed by Honda Ishirō, is emblematic of post-war Japanese cinema.
A fishing boat is hit by an underwater explosion and disappears from radar. Follows other mysterious boat disapearances. Witnesses speak of a prehistoric creature. The Diet open an investigation and entrust it to Professor Yamane, a palaeontologist. The creature is soon christened Godzilla and attacks a small fishing village before turning its attention to Tokyo. The government gets organised in order to protect itself from the threat.
Program
6.00 pm: public welcome
6.30 pm: opening of the Lunar New Year, welcome address by Béatrice Jaluzot, Director of the Institut d'Asie Orientale
6.40 pm: "Godzilla, a semantic complexity"
Lecture by Frédéric Monvoisin, Senior Research Assistant in Film and Audiovisual Studies, University of Liège
7.20 pm: break
7.30 pm: screening of Honda Ishirō's Godzilla ゴジラ (Gojira) (1954)
courtesy of the Tōhō production company
Running time: 97 min (1954)
9.10 pm - 9.30 pm: conversation with Frédéric Monvoisin