Before Rashomon, a series which continues at PFA in February, is organized by the Japan Film Library Council with the support of the Japan Foundation and the curatorial assistance of John Gillett of the British Film Institute. The series is coordinated in the U.S. by the Japan Society, New York; David Owens of the Japan Society provides the following introduction and notes.
“Before Rashomon, the 1950 Akira Kurosawa film that first drew international attention to Japanese cinema, movies had been a lively, innovative art form and a vital part of Japanese entertainment for more than thirty years. A mistaken notion persists that the national cinema of Japan was born with Rashomon and grew to maturity in the golden age of the 1950s. But over the years, as many “lost” films were discovered, what film scholars and movie fans have found out is that the decade of the 1930s was indeed a Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. Even the 1940s, with its harsh censorship and propaganda demands, produced a surprising quantity of excellent films.
“The '30s began as a decade of experimentation. Western intellectual trends--democratic liberalism, expressionism, cubism and dadaism, modernism--converged in Japan in the late '20s and carried over into the '30s until the Depression hit and Japan began its war with China. The collision of that raffish mood of modernism with an intensifying nationalistic sentiment, and increased government attempts to stifle experimentation, resulted in tremendous creative ferment. In cinema, it meant that filmmakers, even when put on a short rein, were inspired to find means to express themselves.” David Owens, Director, Japan Film Center, N.Y. (excerpted and condensed from an introduction to the series, available at PFA).
