Notizie

There was a time when Japanese filmmaker Kijū Yoshida was a cinephile’s mark of exquisite taste. While not entirely obscure, his work has been less-discussed than those of contemporaries Ōshima, Imamura, and Suzuki, even if he’s always been grouped among them as a key author of the Japanese New Wave.

In the early years of online cinephilia, mentioning Yoshida was a sort of a code, a way to signal that your knowledge about Japanese cinema from that era was a bit more nuanced. It is, in many ways, thanks to this interest that these films are more widely talked-about and now the subject of Film at Lincoln Center’s retrospective running from December 1-8.

My introduction to Yoshida’s cinema came courtesy Allan Fish, a self-taught critic who watched films (and TV) from all over the world and wrote vivaciously about the moving image on his blog Wonders in the Dark.

In an interview with IndieWire back in 1996, one year before the death of the famous Zatoichi actor Shintaro Katsu, Takashi Miike said “I plan to make some sort of jidai-geki. Traditional with kimonos, swords and Samurais, as “Lone Wold and Cub” or “Zatoichi”. Its going to be for all of the family. It will be a mixture of Shakespeare and Samurais.” He intended to cast Takeshi Kitano for the lead, but Kitano wanted to direct the movie himself and so Miike got kicked out of the project that he once started. Kitano continued the production and finally released “Zatoichi – The Blind Swordsman” in 2003.

But Miike, not known for being work-shy, picks up his idea again in 2007 to direct a stage play with Sho Aikawa as Ichi. In addition to crowd-pleasers like “Crows Zero” (2007), “Sukiyaki Western Django” (2007), and “Like a Dragon” (2007), Miike’s turn to the traditional Japanese theatre, Kabuki, proofs...

One of the many consequences of the American occupation in Japan after WWII was the resurgence of Yakuza, particularly in areas where Us naval bases were situated, with its members profiting significantly from the black market, which was a direct result of the food rationing the occupational forces have decreed. Basing his script on a novel by Kazu Otsuka, Shohei Imamura uses the aforementioned setting to place the story of “Pigs and Battleships” in the small fishing port of Yokosuka, in an effort that went so much over budget that Nikkatsu decided to ban him from shooting movies for two years.

“Pigs and Battleships” is screening at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival 2019

The story takes place mostly around the red light district and the docks of the area, where the two main protagonists, Kinta and Haruko, try to build a future together, against all odds. Kinta is a low-level...

Only one year before he paved the way for the frenetic cool of the Japanese New Wave with his unabashedly sexual and violent taiyo zoku film ‘The Warped Ones’, Koreyoshi Kurahara took a huge breath before this plunge with a slightly more conservatively executed picture. Taking place a year before the Anti-Anpo demonstrations against the signing of the Security Treaty between the United States and Japan, ‘The Age of Our Own’ condenses the frustrations and anxieties of the country’s youth into an at times beguiling cinematic venture which loses its mind by its conclusion – both in good and bad ways.

“The Age of Our Own” is screening as part of Japan Society:

By following the parallel stories of two brother until their violent confluence in the third act, ‘The Age of Our Own’ explores the conflicting attitudes of the country’s youth. Minami (Hiroyuki Nagato) is largely indifferent...

The most visceral experiences force you to bury your head in those two sullen hands at the end of those weakening arms; covered by fingers, you force a peep through the gaps because curiosity is a menace to your sanity. New Wave cinema has also manipulated its audience in this way, since, no matter when or where yet, with its brazen attitude, hip demeanour, and stylish cinematography, you are obliged to soak it in as a whole. When it comes to the handling of taboo subject matter, only the best pioneering auteurs succeed in whisking its audience in a whirlwind and smashing previously socially-acceptable boundaries with a ten-ton hammer. Koreyoshi Kurahara was one such auteur and his maniacal 1960 film ‘The Warped Ones’ is as glamorous and cool as it is vicious and brutal.

“The Warped Ones” is screening at Japan Society:

A frenzied foray into the nihilistic madness of post-war youth,...

Originally released in 1961, Shohei Imamura’s Pigs and Battleships is a beautiful film and one that wonderfully captures a unique period in Japanese history. Following the nation’s defeat in World War II Japan was subject to a significant American presence and as a country recovering from the very serious effects of the war this had a significant impact on the post war malaise. Moving away from war era beliefs, dealing with a distrust of the older generation and generally struggling to survive in difficult circumstances, the younger Japanese population were wrestling with something of an identity crisis.

Parallels between Japan as a country and the lives of the individual characters constantly run throughout Pigs and Battleships, imbuing the character’s lives and decisions with a greater significance and depth. The two main protagonists, low level yakuza Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato) and his girlfriend Haruko (Jitsuko Yoshimura), are at an important...

"Romanian films set in the era after the fall of Communism suggest the nation suffers a hell of a hangover from the ideology," writes Steve Erickson in Gay City News. "For instance, Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective attacks draconian drug laws left over from the old regime. Tuesday, After Christmas presents a very different vision of Romania. Its characters can afford to buy expensive Christmas gifts; one of them picks up a 3,300 Euro telescope. It may not be entirely accurate to call the film apolitical, but the most political thing about it is its avoidance of Eastern European miserabilism and its depiction of people who could be living much the same lifestyles in Western Europe."

Damon Smith introduces an interview with director Radu Muntean for Filmmaker: "Tuesday, After Christmas, which premiered at Cannes last year, opens on a dreamy scene: sunlight bathes a naked couple, middle-aged Paul (Mimi Branescu) and pretty,...