Hiroshi Shimizu: Notes of an Itinerant Director
July 19–August 28, 2024
One of the great directors of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, Hiroshi Shimizu depicts the struggles of people on the margins with a light touch, avoiding melodrama and inflecting even the most serious stories with humor and profound humanity.
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Mr. Thank You
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Children of the Beehive
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Ornamental Hairpin
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Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Ornamental Hairpin
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 194135mm Archival Print
Friday, July 19 7:00 PMView DetailsYasujiro Ozu regular Chishu Ryu and legendary actress/director Kinuyo Tanaka star in Hiroshi Shimizu’s elegiac tale of two strangers brought together by fate at a mountain onsen resort.
Mr. Thank You
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193635mm Archival Print
Sunday, July 21 7:00 PMView Details"Mr. Thank You is the driver of a bus chugging its way through the hills and villages of rural Japan. Shooting entirely on location, [Hiroshi] Shimizu merrily tracks along the winding paths. Irresistible” (National Film Theatre, London).
Forget Love for Now
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1937Saturday, July 27 7:00 PMView DetailsA single mother turned bar hostess struggles to raise her son in the face of social condemnation and economic exploitation in this set-bound, fog-drenched noir of sinister alleyways, Art Deco nightclubs, and maternal duty.
A Hero of Tokyo
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193535mm Archival Print
Wednesday, July 31 7:00 PMView DetailsA woman turns to operating a hostess bar in order to save her children from poverty, only to find her secrets revealed, in Hiroshi Shimizu’s melodrama, tinged with social critique and noirish influences.
Notes of an Itinerant Performer
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 194135mm Archival Print
Sunday, August 4 4:30 PMView DetailsA wandering performer is welcomed into the home of a tea merchant but must fight for the family’s business after his death, in Hiroshi Shimizu’s classic melodrama of social obligation and women’s sacrifice.
Children in the Wind
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193735mm Archival Print
Friday, August 9 7:00 PMView DetailsTwo brothers are separated when their father is falsely arrested in one of Hiroshi Shimizu’s most beloved films, shot in a variety of outdoor locations and filled with the director’s sweetly observational approach.
Four Seasons of Children: Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193935mm Archival Print
Sunday, August 11 3:00 PMView DetailsTwo young protagonists weather the death of their father and the changes of the four seasons in Hiroshi Shimizu’s follow-up to his beloved Children in the Wind. With a lyricism that “looks forward to early Satyajit Ray” (John Gillett).
Children of the Beehive
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1948Friday, August 16 7:00 PMView DetailsA group of orphans and a returning veteran search for jobs across a scarred postwar Japan in Hiroshi Shimizu’s remarkable work of Japanese neorealism, filmed entirely on location—including in a Hiroshima still marked by the atomic bomb.
Mr. Shosuke Ohara
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1949Sunday, August 18 7:00 PMView DetailsA kindly rich man gives away his fortune to all who ask for it in this village comedy of manners and misfits. Its 1949 postwar setting provides the film a surprisingly elegiac look at how “times have changed.”
Dancing Girl
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1957BAMPFA Collection
Wednesday, August 28 7:00 PMView Details1950s Japanese sex symbol Machiko Kyo stars as a young sister ready to shake up her older sibling’s safe life in the Asakusa entertainment district in Hiroshi Shimizu’s bouncy postwar melodrama of dance-hall girls, lecherous men, and women’s sacrifice.