Kubo, the young son of a legendary samurai who has mysteriously disappeared, lives in a small seaside village. He’s a skilled storyteller, which is how he more or less supports his widowed mother, and is never without his shamisen – a kind of three-stringed Japanese banjo (the two strings of the title will be explained in due course). As it happens, the shamisen, his stories, his family – himself and pretty much his entire surroundings – are deeply magical; and when he tells tales to amuse himself and others, Kubo is playing with forces he doesn’t understand. One of his stories wakes gods and monsters, and he soon finds himself running for his life.

In this kind of film, the world had better be as weird and wonderful as the story means it to be, or we’ll all feel deflated. Luckily this world is the latest creation of the artists at Laika, the Oregon-based animation studio which is set to be the next Ghibli, Aardman, or Pixar. Specialists in stop motion, they know all about world-spinning, and launched themselves in 2009 with what I think is this century’s stop motion masterpiece, Coraline. All three of their previous films – including Paranorman and The Boxtrolls – have shown that they can convincingly spin fantasies saturated with hidden enchantments, and this film is their most saturated yet. Like Coraline it’s so bizarre it wouldn’t work as CGI. We need to see, beyond all doubt, that the Nornlike spirits and talking snow monkeys are real physical objects; then we can believe in them.

As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations it is fun to look back at some of the interesting things we’ve added to our programme over the years to provide a unique experience for our members. These have included a silent film screening with a pianist playing the soundtrack live, the 1936 Flash Gordon sci-fi film serial presented as pre-show entertainment, and Double Take presenting a pre-rehearsed but live performed dubbing of Horror Hospital.

As a nod to these great experiences, and due to the positive response we received from last year’s Unscripted event, we have invited Canberra’s best improvisational performers back to present another live dubbing of a film – completely unscripted and unrehearsed.

The film will be a mystery to our impro team until it hits the screen. Then it will be up to them to make sense of the silent madness and entertain us along the way.

The impro team practice and perform regularly around Canberra and have performed with some of the leading improvisers from around Australia as well as few international visitors. So come along and support some Canberra talent as well as help us celebrate a special piece of Film Group history.