This series showcases 35mm archival prints from BAMPFA’s outstanding Japanese cinema collection, from Mizoguchi to Miyazaki.
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BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
In sixteenth-century Japan, a potter has his head turned by a phantom enchantress, with predictable results. “A shattering experience, among the greatest movies ever made” (New York Times).
BAMPFA Collection
Bring all your senses and your handkerchief to this haunting tale of a family (led by Kinuyo Tanaka) victimized by the cruel practices of feudal Japan, “developed with intuition, cunning, and an overarching sense of tragedy” (SF Weekly).
BAMPFA Collection
A young man learns dedication and discipline in life—and judo—in Kurosawa’s debut film, “a must for Kurosawa admirers” (Los Angeles Times).
BAMPFA Collection
An exquisite, faintly melancholy portrait of a family, with Setsuko Hara as the daughter on whose marriage everything depends. “I wanted to depict the cycles of life, the transience of life” (Ozu).
BAMPFA Collection
Shinoda’s “remix” of a classic Japanese bunraku puppet play finds live actors, puppets, and their handlers all part of the action, heightened by a Brechtian divide between “story” and “telling” and a jarring score by Toru Takemitsu.
BAMPFA Collection
In Kurosawa’s humanist masterpiece, an ordinary civil servant discovers what it means to live. This Japanese Everyman was perhaps Takashi Shimura’s greatest role.
BAMPFA Collection
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
In sixteenth-century Japan, a potter has his head turned by a phantom enchantress, with predictable results. “A shattering experience, among the greatest movies ever made” (New York Times).
BAMPFA Collection
A lyrical, haunting requiem for the victims of war, set amid the giant Buddhas of Burma. Winner of the top prize at the Venice film festival and one of Ichikawa’s most famous films.
BAMPFA Collection
Hideko Takamine portrays the consummate Naruse heroine: high-minded, determined, and out of her element in a sordid world. “An elegant essay in black-and-white CinemaScope . . . could give heartbreak lessons to Fassbinder and Sirk” (Village Voice).
Japanese Language Version
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
In Miyazaki’s stirring animated epic, a girl both soldier and scientist seeks to reconcile the last remnants of her still-warring species with the monstrous biological order overtaking earth.
BAMPFA Collection
Shinoda’s “remix” of a classic Japanese bunraku puppet play finds live actors, puppets, and their handlers all part of the action, heightened by a Brechtian divide between “story” and “telling” and a jarring score by Toru Takemitsu.