🍿 MIFF number 10 was a wonderful look at Japanese listening cafes in A Century in Sound (2024) ★★★★

A rectangular image with a review of the movie A Century in Sound (2024). The movie poster is on the left and the review on the right side. Across the bottom is a rating of Poor Okay Good Great with Great selected. The review reads: The first three of a limited six part series exploring Japanese listening cafes/bars, with classical, Jazz and J-Rock covered. The episodes show the commitment to the listening experience, with the classical cafe no longer serving food so the noise didn’t distract from the music. The owners have spent a lifetime (or in the case of the classical one nearly 100 years by multiple generations of the family) building their record collections and personalising the audio equipment and even making their own speakers to suit the space. Each episode covers a part of Japanese history from the 1930s to the ‘90s through personal reflections of the owners and visitors, their passion for the music clearly evident. The storytelling with the music background was so intimate and almost reverent, you wanted to be in the bar sharing a drink with the owner.