The Films of Seijun Suzuki

May 7–June 30, 2016

In films ranging from B-movie potboilers to beguiling metaphysical mysteries, Seijun Suzuki's audaciously experimental approach has gained him a cult following both in Japan and abroad.

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Pistol Opera
Branded to Kill
Zigeunerweisen
Kagero-za
Smashing the O-Line

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Past Films

Princess Raccoon
- Thursday, June 30 7 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 2005
Chinese superstar Zhang Ziyi and Japanese slacker king Joe Odagiri star in Suzuki’s bizarre fable involving an exiled prince, shape-shifting raccoons, and a princess. “Energetic, inventive and ever-so-slightly insane” (The Guardian).
Pistol Opera
- Saturday, June 25 8:15 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 2001
Imported Print!

An assassin battles her way to the top of her guild in Suzuki’s very loose sequel to Branded to Kill, updated with cartoonish CGI effects and infused with the metaphysical concerns of the Taisho Trilogy.
Yumeji
- Saturday, June 18 8:30 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1991
Imported Print!

Suzuki’s final film in his Taisho Trilogy spins a fantastical tale from the life of a historical figure, the bohemian artist Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934).
Kagero-za
- Thursday, June 16 7 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1981
Imported Print!

Suzuki’s hallucinatory Taisho-era drama blends reality, fantasy, and theater in a tale of a possible love suicide. “May well be Suzuki’s finest achievement outside the constraints of genre filmmaking” (Tony Rayns).
Tokyo Drifter
- Thursday, May 12 7:30 PM
- Friday, June 10 9 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1966
Digital Restoration!

Introduction by Tom Vick (May 12 screening only)
Tasked with making a vehicle for actor/singer Tetsuya Watari, Suzuki concocted this crazy yarn about a reformed yakuza on the run from his former comrades. “One of the most brilliant genre movies ever made” (Tony Rayns).
Gate of Flesh
- Saturday, May 28 8:30 PM
Seijun Suzuki
1964
A gang of tough prostitutes try to survive in the ruins of postwar Tokyo, but a lusty ex-soldier (Jo Shishido) soon upsets their fragile camaraderie. Part social-realist drama, part sadomasochistic trash opera.
Branded to Kill
- Friday, May 27 8:45
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1967
Suzuki’s anarchic send-up of B-movie clichés stars Jo Shishido as an assassin who winds up a target. Cited as an inspiration by filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and John Woo.
Story of a Prostitute
- Saturday, May 21 6:30 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1965
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick!

A comfort woman sent to the frontlines of Manchuria during the Sino-Japanese War fights back in Suzuki’s scathing portrayal of Japanese militarism.
Zigeunerweisen
- Thursday, May 19 7 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1980
Imported Print!

Named the best film of the 1980s in a poll of Japanese film critics, Suzuki’s metaphysical ghost story involves love triangles, doppelgangers, and a blurred line between the worlds of the living and the dead.
Kanto Wanderer
- Wednesday, May 11 7 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1963
Imported Print!

Introduction & Booksigning by Tom Vick
A fearsome yakuza bodyguard (Akira Kobayashi) is torn between defending his boss against a rival gang leader and his obsession with Tatsuko, a femme fatale who reappears from his past.
Youth of the Beast
- Sunday, May 8 8 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1963
Imported Print!

Jo Shishido plays a disgraced ex-cop who pits two yakuza gangs against each other to avenge the death of a fellow officer.
Smashing the 0-Line
- Saturday, May 7 8:40 PM
Seijun Suzuki
Japan, 1960
Imported Print!

With its jazzy musical score and sordid milieu of drug smuggling and human trafficking, this crime thriller features an ambitious and amoral reporter going up against a ruthless female gang boss.

The Films of Seijun Suzuki

May 7–June 30, 2016

Suzuki's freewheeling approach and audacious experimentation has gained him a cult following in Japan and abroad.

On the occasion of the publication of Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki by Tom Vick, we present a retrospective of the Japanese filmmaker’s works and welcome Vick to BAMPFA for a booksigning and to introduce several screenings. In a career spanning nearly five decades, Suzuki (b. 1923) has amassed a body of work ranging from B-movie potboilers to beguiling metaphysical mysteries. Suzuki’s first job as a director was at Nikkatsu Studios, which assigned him scripts to turn into B movies. In the mid-1960s, with dozens of such films under his belt, Suzuki and his collaborators, art director Takeo Kimura and cinematographers Shigeyoshi Mine and Kazue Nagatsuka, began experimenting with the assigned material. Nikkatsu eventually fired Suzuki for making films...

Suzuki's freewheeling approach and audacious experimentation has gained him a cult following in Japan and abroad.

In the 1980s, Suzuki reinvented himself as an independent filmmaker. Freed from the commercial obligations of studio work, he indulged his passion for the Taisho era (1912–26), a brief period of Japanese history that has been likened to America’s Roaring Twenties. In the 1990s, a traveling retrospective—led by a series in 1995 at BAMPFA—brought long-overdue attention to Suzuki’s films in the United States and Europe and caught the attention of directors Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. Perhaps inspired by this newfound attention, Suzuki returned to filmmaking after another decade-long absence, making two films that look back on his career while advancing it with new technology.

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Copresented with The Japan Foundation. The Seijun Suzuki touring retrospective has been orchestrated by Tom Vick, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution, in conjunction with The Japan Foundation, and coordinated at BAMPFA by Senior Film Curator Susan Oxtoby. Thanks to the following for their generous assistance: Kanako Shirasaki, The Japan Foundation, New York; Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Consulate General of Japan San Francisco; and the Japan Society of Northern California. Texts adapted from program notes by Tom Vick for the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution.

Copresenter

Japan Foundation