5 Results
The Makioka Sisters: Of Love and Money
Bringing Junichiro Tanizaki’s sprawling, elegiac historical novel The Makioka Sisters (1948) to the screen would seem an undertaking tailor-made for Kon Ichikawa. The renowned writer’s work was familiar territory for the veteran director, who…
Pigs and Battleships: Feeding Frenzy
The title alone screams incongruity. Shohei Imamura’s 1961 black-and-white caper movie Pigs and Battleships bursts with the confusion and exuberance of a cross-cultural encounter. In its lively portrayal of enthusiastic Japanese locals welcoming th…
Twenty-Four Eyes: Growing Pains
One of the most awarded films in Japanese history, Twenty-Four Eyes was already a nostalgia piece when Keisuke Kinoshita directed it in 1954. For a Japanese audience just three years out of the Allied occupation following the heartrending devastation…
Woman in the Dunes: Shifting Sands
Of the varied media the artist Hiroshi Teshigahara mastered, filmmaking is the one he let go. Upon the death of his headmaster father, in 1979, he assumed the full responsibility of leadership of the Sogetsu flower arrangement school, in which his si
…The Burmese Harp
In beautifully composed black-and-white, lilting easily from sweeping landscape to emotional close-up, and tempered by a gentle and nostalgic choral score, director Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp probes deeply into the moral chaos of war. Following …