Film: Summer Vacation 1999

Based on the shojo manga The Heart of Thomas, this ethereal Japanese melodrama has achieved cult status for its brilliant melancholic exploration of the shifting attractions between four boys at an isolated country school. Shusuke Kaneko cast girls in the male roles, later dubbing in their voices with those of four male actors. A simultaneously gay, lesbian, and T4T (trans for trans) movie, Summer Vacation 1999 was praised by the late noted historian of Japanese cinema Donald Richie as “one of the mostoriginal Japanese films of the year.” It was never released on DVD or digitally in the United States.

Conversation between series curator Jenni Olson and Karen Nakamura

Karen Nakamura is the Robert and Colleen Haas Distinguished Chair of Disability Studies and a Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She is currently working on the intersections of transsexualityand disability politics in postwar Japan.