Kon Ichikawa's wildly melodramatic tale of a kabuki female impersonator who exacts a long-delayed revenge. After a best actor win at Cannes for teenager Yuya Yagira, the youngest performer ever to win the award, Nobody Knows cemented his position as a festival darling and subsequently became his most widely seen feature thus far. Representative of the socially conscious ‘tendency films’ of the 1920s and 30s in Japan during a boom in Marxist ideas (Kenji Mizoguchi’s Metropolitan Symphony and Tomu Uchida’s A Living Puppet, both 1929, are other examples), Shigeyoshi Suzuki’s masterpiece showcases not simply the capitalist exploitation of the working class, but a series of the heroine’s struggles with a variety of oppressors. It’s a foolish endeavour to try to determine the best film, year by year, of any filmmaking nation, let alone one with so extraordinary a cinematic history as Japan. Horror1999115 minsDirector: Takashi Miike. At 74 minutes, it’s double the length of its predecessor, Momotaro, Eagle of the Sea (1943). 8 Likes, 0 Comments - Redemption Films (@redemptionfilms666) on Instagram: “1/2 Did you know that the BFI player has an amazing range of Japanese cinema currently available?…” The script was co-written by Leonard Schrader, an American Japanophile who lived and taught in Japan for many years, also co-writing Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza (1974) and a brace of his brother Paul’s films – Blue Collar (1978) and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). The 100 Best Movies of the Decade ... (and is still available for a small rental fee via Milestone Films or the British Film Institute’s BFI Player, complete with a new score). This is the debut film of one of the most widely known and respected female directors in contemporary Japan, Miwa Nishikawa. ... BFI Japan 2020: Over 100 years of Japanese cinema. An early film from Keisuke Kinoshita, the celebrated master of humanist cinema behind Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) and The Ballad of Narayama (1958). While little known in the west until Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1951, Japanese cinema is now regarded as one of the great canons of world film. Somai’s terrific later films Typhoon Club (1985) and The Friends (1994) suggest an affinity for summertime vibes – if only they were available on home media in the west. It’s as hard to interpret Kuroki’s images as it is easy to marvel at their beauty and lyricism; cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki deserves a name check for his exquisite monochrome imagery. This approach brings drawbacks of its own, of course. It gives the effect (in Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie’s phrase) “of eavesdropping on life itself”. It struck a nerve with the public, causing riots and becoming the most commercially successful Japanese film of the silent era. Director: Buntaro Futagawa. Tweet. Yumeji Tsukioka’s vivid performance in the leading role is a decisive part of the film’s appeal. His film also critiques the societal structures that granted them such terrible power. Four schoolgirls form a rock band to participate in their high school graduation festival. Its non-judgemental, carefully observant approach was to prove typical of Hani, who was to go on to realise a series of intricate dramas on themes of female emancipation and adolescent psychology, and to explore themes of culture clash in films set in Kenya and Peru. Of course, Kinoshita paid for his audacity and did not direct another film until after the war. Alfred Hitchcock, John Schlesinger, Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Nicolas Roeg and more! traces the story of a fragmented family: a grown-up daughter living with her mum in Tokyo, while dad has absconded to the country with his mistress. Yusaku Matsuda gives an outrageous performance as the tutor hired to coach a wayward adolescent; sadly this talented actor died of cancer, aged only 40, in 1989. was remade in Hollywood in 2004, with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez hitting the dancefloor. Tetsuaki Matsue’s work is indicative of the importance of the field of ‘jishu eiga’, a creative wellspring of self-financed independent films from which figures like Naomi Kawase, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinya Tsukamoto emerged. Kurosawa’s episodic, poignant story of a 19th-century doctor (Toshiro Mifune) working in a clinic for the poor and his tumultuous friendship with young intern. These 50 are all available to watch with a free 14-day trial. Teinosuke Kinugasa’s sumptuous period drama astonished audiences with its dramatic force and spectacular colour cinematography. The season also includes classic Japanese films by Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and others. The second Koreeda title on this list – the sublime Still Walking (2008) fell inbetween – finds him again working with child actors, inimitably drawing out their natural talent and potential. This was also the mighty year that a certain atomic reptile first emerged out of Tokyo Bay, for Godzilla’s sake. Kurosawa’s classic about a drifting samurai who plays two gangs off against each other, famously remade as A Fistful of Dollars. The BFI 75 Most Wanted is a list compiled in 2010 by the British Film Institute of the most sought-after British feature films not held in the BFI National Archive, and classified as "missing, believed lost".The films chosen range from quota quickies and B-movies to lavish prestige productions of their day. Perhaps the most complete encompassment of the most common themes of Miyazaki’s work, Spirited Away is a major touchstone for many an animation fan. Isao Takahata’s career with Studio Ghibli often presented him as the left brain to Hayao Miyazaki’s right: while both were known for obsessive naturalist detail in their work (and a flaunting of schedules), Takahata’s films are quieter, sometimes even softer. The film offers a daring depiction of female sexuality and desire as well as a powerful instance of women’s creativity and self-expression on and off the screen. Drama 1953 89 mins. Missing delicious Japanese food? A collection of extraordinarily high-resolution footage shot on 68mm film between (1897) and 1902 (player.bfi.org.uk) submitted 19 hours ago by James_Fennell to r/ObscureMedia 5 comments Much as many critics decried the major studio Nikkatsu’s near wholesale shift to eroticism between 1971 and 1988, a number of mini-masterpieces can be found among the near thousand features turned out as part of its Roman Porno adult line. In the mid- and late-1920s, Japan produced more than 500 films annually; it’s heartbreaking to think that the vast majority of them have been lost. Another radical release from the Art Theatre Guild, it proved a key influence on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971). This tender account of a humble rickshaw man who falls in love with a young widow is one of the finest and most moving films produced during the war years. Her second film, Domains, is more ambitious still, offering a stark deconstruction of the cinematic experience. Hiroshi Teshigahara's mystifying, serene and provocative fable about an entomologist who becomes trapped in a young widow’s desert shack. Period drama1963114 minsDirector: Kon Ichikawa. The original title of this examination of a woman’s life across several decades of dramatic socioeconomic change – from impoverished rural origins through dogged ascent, following her arrival in Tokyo, from bar hostess to sex worker to brothel madame – literally translates as ‘Entomological Account of Japan’, and the director certainly frames his guileless but instinctive protagonist as never really in control of her fate, just changing course and carrying on in a new direction when confronted by the many setbacks in her life. Subscribe to watch. Most people knowthe long-haired, creepy curse-caster Sadako by her westernized name, Samara, from the 2002 English-language remake of the film. He’d directed his first six in 1932 alone, all of them – like the other 16 – jidaigeki, or period dramas. BFI Film and TV Classics Artists' Film & Video Magazines Gifts. Martial arts1958139 minsDirector: Akira Kurosawa. High Definition transfers of all three films; Feature-length audio commentaries on Violent Cop and Sonatine by Chris D, punk poet, singer, actor, film historian and author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film; Newly recorded audio commentary on Boiling Point by David Jenkins; That Man is Dangerous: The Birth of Takeshi Kitano … The remake deviated … Following an Italian fighter pilot cursed to live as a pig after the First World War, its plot may appear simple compared with much of his filmography, but there are complex emotions at its heart. When Akiko falls into desperate trouble, she turns away from her family. Menu. 1936, 1953, most years of the early 1960s, 1985 and 1997 were all especially headache-inducing, whereas 1954 has some claim to being any nation’s greatest ever cinematic year. From Kurosawa to Koreeda, we make some tough choices about the finest film of every year of Japanese film history going back to 1925. non-Japanese) films in 2009. Mikio Naruse’s best-known film is a masterful study of Ginza hostess struggling under constant pressures to compromise her honour. Tweet. As we’re reminded often, the west began to ‘discover’ Japanese cinema in 1951, when Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Based on Shuichi Yoshida’s best-selling crime novel of the same title, and adapted for the screen by the author, this sprawling thriller is set in a remote village near Nagasaki. Anyone who loves Ozu should also love Yasujiro Shimazu, who pioneered the Shochiku tradition of understated domestic drama of which Ozu was the most distinguished exponent. The earliest surviving film by one of the major masters of Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu, Days of Youth is an outstandingly creative intersection of various styles and genres that had emerged in Hollywood, Europe and Japan by the late 1920s. Summer Wars is memorable not just for its unique approach to spaces existing outside of reality, but for its attention to how these spaces affect his characters. Kazuo Kuroki’s imaginative, elliptical and individual films mark him out as one of the unsung visionaries of Japanese modernism. The worlds of children and adults are played off against each other through visual rhythm and comic wit in this most celebrated of Ozu’s silent films. Centring around an impoverished samurai who seeks revenge against the corrupted, entrenched power of a prominent clan by committing seppuku (suicide by disembowelment), the film unfolds like a tight psychological thriller enclosed in the ritual space of the palace’s courtyard. An ode to fleeting youth and friendships, Nakahara’s film is shot in a naturalistic style, allowing the camaraderie between the nearly all-female cast to blossom. The sets are by Takeo Kimura, known for his work with Seijun Suzuki in the 1960s, while cameos from a host of veteran talent include the benshi silent film narrators Shunsui Matsuda and Midori Sawato. The personal 8mm work, which also includes Embracing (1992), with which Naomi Kawase emerged to become Japan’s foremost female director still seems remarkably fresh. Itami followed it up a year later with the equally engaging ‘ramen western’ Tampopo, a hilarious parody that sends up the conspicuous consumption of the Bubble era. Shohei Imamura, just about to embark on his own directorial career, co-wrote the screenplay; he later commented that the film is “essential to an understanding of Kawashima”. GOM Media Player is a free and open-source application that is used for playing a video. It’s the first Japanese avant-garde feature, its stunning visuals comprising a magnificent mixture of different modes and influences: modern dance and traditional Japanese masks, the uncanny setting and chiaroscuro lighting of German Expressionist cinema, and the fast montage of that same era’s French Impressionist films.
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