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For nearly 50 years, woodblock print artist Tom Killion has carved beautiful, iconic California landscapes, using Japanese hand tools and rendering them in vivid color with an old German printing press. Deeply inspired by the renowned 19th-century artist Hokusai, famous for his Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings, Killion long dreamed of learning the traditional Japanese method of printing by hand. Journey to Hokusai follows Killion's painstaking creative process and his pilgrimage to Japan to study under Kenji Takenaka, a fifth-generation master printer in Kyoto. As he learns new techniques and trades in his oil-based ink for traditional watercolor, Killion discovers more and more about the history of printmaking. His odyssey takes him to a papermaker that is still in business after 1500 years and to the quiet village of Obuse, where Hokusai spent his final years. Journey to Hokusai is an intimate exploration of the connection between two artists from different worlds. (Mill Valley Film Festival)
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