Best known in the West for his cult classic Black Lizard and an acclaimed retrospective at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival, Japanese genre master Kinji Fukasaku has said that, as a young director, making movies was a way of hurling his anger at the world. His turbulent energy and at times extreme violence express a cynical critique of social conditions and genuine sympathy for those left out of Japan's postwar prosperity.Fukasaku began his career at Toei in 1953 and worked through the ranks in a time when this top-grossing studio depended largely on period films. However, from his directorial debut in 1961, Fukasaku turned his talents to contemporary action and yakuza films to explore the chaos of postwar Japan. From his early masterpiece Wolf, Pig, Man to the excessive Graveyard of Honor over twenty years later, Fukasaku tests loyalty and morality against greed and the struggle to survive. In the 1970s Fukasaku alone briefly revived the then declining yakuza genre, winning critical praise with his radical, enormously influential Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, which connected the mercenary depravity of modern-day yakuza with violence in society as a whole.Fukasaku has commented that he attempts to strip away untruth from events and give authenticity to fiction. His innovative use of documentary techniques paints a broad social context for his notorious gangland tales. Nihilistic characters combine with signature sequences of freeze-frame flashbacks, delirious hand-held camera, and dynamic editing to propel narratives along the edges of genre formula. "His energetic and stylish direction, and his thematic consistency, make Fukasaku the outstanding director of mainstream, modern-day yakuza pictures. Only Seijun Suzuki is his master, but then he made films about the genre rather than within it." (The Gangster Film)We would like to thank Kinji Fukasaku; Toshiko Adilman; Simon Field, Lucius Barre, Rotterdam International Film Festival; Dennis Bartok, Chris D., American Cinematheque; Isao Tsujimoto, Naoko Watanabe, Akiko Machimura, The Japan Foundation; Tetsushi Sudo, Toho; Masaki Koga, Shochiku; Yukio Homma, Toei.Program Notes by Jason Sanders. Saturday August 5, 2000
