In Focus: Japanese Film Classics

April 6–May 11, 2016

In this lecture/screening series, experts guide us in an exploration of key works of Japanese cinema.

Read full description
  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • A Hen in the Wind

    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1948

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Wednesday, April 6 3:10 PM

    Lecture by Susan Oxtoby. Response by Nathaniel Dorsky
    A POW comes home to discover that his wife has prostituted herself to pay their son’s hospital bills. “Ozu brilliantly and honestly confronts the postwar moment” (Joan Mellen).

    View Details

  • Equinox Flower

    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1958

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Wednesday, April 13 3:10 PM

    Lecture by Marilyn Fabe
    Modern girl Kinuyo Tanaka quietly rebels against her traditional parents’ plans in Ozu’s first color film. “Gentle and amused in the way that it acknowledges time’s passage [and] the changing of values” (NY Times).

    View Details

  • The Life of Oharu

    Kenji Mizoguchi
    Japan, 1952

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Wednesday, April 20 3:10 PM

    Lecture by Alan Tansman
    The story of a noblewoman’s fall from grace becomes “perhaps the finest film made in any country about the oppression of women” (Joan Mellen) in the hands of director Mizoguchi and actress Kinuyo Tanaka.

    View Details

  • Yojimbo

    Akira Kurosawa
    Japan, 1961

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Wednesday, April 27 3:10 PM

    Lecture by Susan Oxtoby
    Toshiro Mifune is a sly, amoral mercenary looking to make a fistful of ryo in a lawless town in Kurosawa’s tongue-in-cheek anti-epic, which inspired A Fistful of Dollars.

    View Details

  • When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

    Mikio Naruse
    Japan, 1960

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Wednesday, May 4 3:10 PM

    Lecture by Miryam Sas
    Hideko Takamine portrays the consummate Naruse heroine: high-minded, determined, and out of her element in a sordid world. The film “could give heartbreak lessons to Fassbinder and Sirk” (Village Voice).

    View Details

  • Branded to Kill

    Seijun Suzuki
    Japan, 1967

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Wednesday, May 11 3:10 PM

    Lecture by Tom Vick
    Suzuki’s absurdist gangster thriller about an assassin who gets aroused by the smell of rice seems as wildly perverse now as it did in 1967, and has influenced filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to John Woo.

    View Details