Tue 01.10.
20:00
Cinema
Arsenal 1
Director
Hiroshi Teshigahara, Susumu Hani, Yoshiro Kawazu, Kyushiro Kusakabe, Sadamu Maruo, Zenzo Matsuyama, Kanzaburo Mushanokoji, Masahiro Ogi, Ryuichiro Sakisaka
Japan / 1958
24 min.
/ Digital file
/ Original version with English subtitles
This short collaborative work from the Cinema 58 group takes the form of an avant-garde urban symphony that casts its gaze on the largest city in the world at the time, a place where the inexorable advance of modernity was in an oft-fragile balance with old traditions. The woodcuts observed by a young man (the influential author and film critic Donald Richie) in a display window are continually inserted into the cityscape as graphic animations throughout the film.
Director
Kiju Yoshida
Japan / 1966
102 min.
/ 35 mm
/ Original version with English subtitles
Original language
Japanese
In his series of “anti-melodramas” made outside the studios featuring women in states of emotional distress, Yoshida criticized the traditional roles of women as victims and objects of desire. Bored of her husband, Miyako (Mariko Okada) begins an affair with the young Kitano and lets him take nude photos of her. When these are stolen and used to blackmail her, she attempts to turn the tables on her abuser. “The anti-melodramas dramatically expanded a central device deployed pointedly, but subtly in AKITSU SPRINGS: the expressive use of landscape and the passage of time as a means of capturing a character’s otherwise unexpressed inner feelings and experience.” (Haden Guest)
After studying literature, Kiju (Yoshishige) Yoshida (1933–2022) joined Studio Shochiku, where he filmed his debut in 1960 and, together with Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda, became one of the main representatives of Japan’s Nouvelle Vague. An innovative stylist and astute critic (and thinker) of cinematic forms and themes, his films are characterized by a philosophical depth.
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