In Focus: Japanese Film Classics
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.
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- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
A Hen in the Wind
Yasujiro Ozu
Japan, 1948Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.
Wednesday, April 6 3:10 PMView DetailsLecture 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).
Equinox Flower
Yasujiro Ozu
Japan, 1958Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.
Wednesday, April 13 3:10 PMView DetailsLecture 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).
The Life of Oharu
Kenji Mizoguchi
Japan, 1952Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.
Wednesday, April 20 3:10 PMView DetailsLecture 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.
Yojimbo
Akira Kurosawa
Japan, 1961Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.
Wednesday, April 27 3:10 PMView DetailsLecture 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.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Mikio Naruse
Japan, 1960Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.
Wednesday, May 4 3:10 PMView DetailsLecture 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).
Branded to Kill
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1967Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.
Wednesday, May 11 3:10 PMView DetailsLecture 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.