The Criterion Collection
Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.
In Theaters
Apr 2, 2015 — Repertory Picks New York’s Japan Society is in the midst of celebrating two of Japanese cinema’s biggest stars in the screening series The Most Beautiful: The War Films of Shirley Yamaguchi and Setsuko Hara. Focusing on films made before, during,...
Jan 6, 2015 — Kihachi Okamoto's The Sword of Doom is likely to strike the unalerted viewer as an exercise in absurdist violence, tracking the career of a nihilistic swordsman from his gratuitous murder of a defenseless old man to his final descent into...
Dec 16, 2014 — The prolific and popular Keisuke Kinoshita made his fascinating first movies at a time of great difficulty and censorship, yet their spirit and brilliance shine through.
Sneak Peeks
Aug 27, 2014 — In this excerpt from a 1999 interview produced by the Directors Guild of Japan, director Shohei Imamura talks about the personal investigative approach he took to making the 1979 serial killer drama Vengeance Is Mine, for which he viewed himself...
Aug 26, 2014 — Define the Japanese New Wave however you like—there are innumerable possible launching points, and the name players in the fifties and sixties were old and young and in between—but from any juncture, Shohei Imamura was a primary figure and, at...
Jun 25, 2014 — Hearts and Minds is the classic antiwar documentary film of the Vietnam era. It was released in 1974, one year after the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam and a year before North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front...
May 19, 2014 — As in his other films, the world of Abbas Kiarostami’s latest is one of simulation, not-quite-realness, and unexpected tenderness.
In Theaters
May 1, 2014 — Repertory PicksCinema lovers in New York will have their calendars full for the coming month. Museum of the Moving Image is hosting the most comprehensive United States retrospective of Kenji Mizoguchi films in decades. Usually named right below Akira Kurosawa...
Production Notes
Apr 15, 2014 — In the 1950s, many Japanese directors made films that urgently reflected the postwar realities of their country, from economic struggle to nuclear fallout. Another common theme was the influence of American culture on Japan, as seen in films by Nagisa...