The Early Days of the Pacific Film Archive & Double Suicide

(Shinju ten no Amijima)

Masahiro Shinoda
Japan, 1969

Presented in collaboration with the Berkeley Historical Society & Museum, located at 1931 Center Street, where the Berkeley and the Movies exhibition is on display until September 21.

  • Lecture
    Sheldon Renan

    Sheldon Renan was the founding director of the Pacific Film Archive, where he worked between 1967 and 1973.

featuring

Kichiemon Nakamura, Shima Iwashita, Hosei Komatsu, Yusuke Takita,

Sheldon Renan was the founding director of the Pacific Film Archive, where he worked between 1967 and 1973. Now based in Portland, Oregon, Renan will give a presentation on the early history of the film archive and then be joined for an on-stage conversation with Susan Oxtoby, BAMPFA’s Director of Film and Senior Film Curator.

Following the presentation, there will be a short interval before we screen Double Suicide at 2:15, shown in a 35mm print that was accessioned by the Pacific Film Archive nearly fifty years ago and is representative of the strength in Japanese cinema that Renan helped establish for the archive in the 1970s.

Masahiro Shinoda’s first film for Japan’s avant-garde Art Theatre Guild, Double Suicide strikingly reinterprets Monzaemon Chikamatsu’s famed 1720 Bunraku puppet play about the doomed love between a married paper-shop owner and a courtesan; here it’s not just the play that is presented, but the entire presentation of the play. We begin with the kurogo (men dressed in black who traditionally maneuver the puppets) assembling the stage; soon, however, live actors replace the puppets, though they too are controlled by the kurogo. Toru Takemitsu’s jarring score heightens the film’s Brechtian, abstract distancing of “story” and “telling,” as does the minimal set design by Kiyoshi Awazu; by the end, only the kurogo’s anguish remains.

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Masahiro Shinoda
  • Taeko Tomioka
  • Toru Takemitsu
Based On

  • a puppet play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu

Cinematographer
  • Toichiro Narushima
Language
  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 100 mins
Source
  • BAMPFA
Permission
  • Janus Films

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.