Japanese Story

Dec 3, 2020 — First Person A dedicated movie buff from my teenage years onward, and an assiduous if not pedantic completist forever seeking out obscure backlist items by favorite auteurs, such as that rare screening of George Cukor’s The Model and the Marriage...

Nov 13, 2019 — TIFF Cinematheque presents an eclectic selection of eleven films by the Japanese director.

Apr 12, 2018 — Nagisa Oshima followed up his succès de scandale In the Realm of the Senses with this Cannes award–winning ghost story, playing this week at the Austin Film Society.

Jul 27, 2017 — For the Ragtag Cinema in Columbia, Missouri, filmmaker David Lowery selects Ugetsu as a work that influenced his acclaimed new drama A Ghost Story.

Jun 7, 2017 — Japanese New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda discusses how Kenji Mizoguchi seamlessly weaves together harsh realism and spellbinding fantasy in his masterpiece Ugetsu.

Feb 24, 2017 — Cinema lost one of its most venerated maestros of excess last week with the passing of director Seijun Suzuki, whose signature films from the 1960s exploded the conventions of the Japanese studio system. While honing his craft in dozens of...

Sep 16, 2016 — Critic Phillip Lopate explores the duality of the director’s approach to his female protagonists and asks whether his films are proto- or antifeminist.

May 31, 2016 — With Alice in the Cites, Wim Wenders created one of the most nuanced and complex portraits of an empowered young girl ever seen on-screen.

Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.

Oct 21, 2015 — Masaki Kobayashi takes on broken vows and the unreality of the past in his sensual and spooky four-part adaptation of Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese folktales.