Shitamachi: Tales of Downtown Tokyo
June 16–July 29, 2023
Take a cinematic tour of Tokyo’s gritty working-class district, Shitamachi, with classic and contemporary films by Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kinuyo Tanaka, and others, including many compelling but lesser-known works.
Read full description-
Japanese Grandmas
-
Tokyo Story
-
Humanity and Paper Balloons
-
Love Letter
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Stray Dog
Akira Kurosawa
Japan, 1949Friday, June 16 7 PMView DetailsToshiro Mifune is a driven detective in Akira Kurosawa’s bravura Tokyo noir. “A bona fide masterpiece” (Time Out).
Japanese Grandmas
Tadashi Imai
Japan, 1962BAMPFA Collection Print
Sunday, June 18 5 PMView DetailsAs two rebellious Japanese grandmas wander about Tokyo like down-market flaneurs, a portrait of a neighborhood caught between generations emerges.
Tokyo Story
Yasujiro Ozu
Japan, 1953New Digital Restoration
Saturday, June 24 7 PMView DetailsThis simple, sad story of the gap between generations in a Japanese family revealed to Western viewers the poetic acuteness of Yasujiro Ozu’s style. “Wonderful . . . one of the manifest miracles of cinema” (New Yorker).
Humanity and Paper Balloons
Sadao Yamanaka
Japan, 1937Imported 35mm Print
Wednesday, June 28 7 PMView DetailsA poor ronin samurai and his gambling neighbor become involved in a desperate plan in this little-known gem from the 1930s, set in what would become downtown Tokyo during the Edo period.
Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District
Yuzo Kawashima
Japan, 1956Saturday, July 1 7 PMView DetailsA down-on-their-luck young couple settles on the edge of Tokyo’s red-light district in this major rediscovery, a “radiant masterwork of Japanese cinematic melodramas” (Tokyo Filmex).
Record of a Tenement Gentleman
Yasujiro Ozu
Japan, 1947Thursday, July 6 7 PMView DetailsAn unsentimental and funny treatment of a sentimental subject: an abandoned boy in postwar Tokyo taken in by a widow who claims to dislike children.
Nobody Knows
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Japan, 2004Sunday, July 9 4 PMView DetailsBased on a true story that scandalized Japan in the mid-1980s, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2004 drama follows four children left abandoned in a Tokyo apartment. “Absorbing, humane, and deeply moving,” Nobody Knows reveals the “director’s talent for extending a single moment with superbly poised artistry” (The Guardian).
Love Letter
Kinuyo Tanaka
Japan, 1953New 4K Restoration
Wednesday, July 12 7 PMView DetailsSet in Toyko just after the end of the American occupation of Japan, Kinuyo Tanaka’s impressive directorial debut provides “a much-needed female voice that offers a . . . nuanced reading of women’s lives in postwar Japan, and especially regarding sex work” (Natalie Ng, Filmed in Ether).
Ikiru
Akira Kurosawa
Japan, 1952BAMPFA Collection Print
Sunday, July 16 4 PMView DetailsIn Akira Kurosawa’s humanist masterpiece, an ordinary civil servant discovers what it means to live. This Japanese Everyman was perhaps Takashi Shimura’s greatest role.
Shitamachi Sunshine
Yoji Yamada
Japan, 1963BAMPFA Collection Print
Wednesday, July 19 7 PMView DetailsChieko Baisho shines as a Shitamachi factory worker in Yoji Yamada’s fascinating study of postwar Japanese social mobility and a woman’s choice in the paths she takes.
Where Chimneys Are Seen
Heinosuke Gosho
Japan, 1953Imported 35mm Print
Sunday, July 23 7 PMView DetailsSet against the backdrop of Tokyo’s growing industrialization during the 1950s, Ken Uehara and Kinuyo Tanaka portray a tabi salesman and his wife, whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of an abandoned baby on their tenement doorstep.
Drunken Angel
Akira Kurosawa
Japan, 1948Saturday, July 29 7:30 PMView DetailsDoctor meets tubercular gangster in the slums of postwar Japan in this noirish tale, the first film in the long collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune.