In Focus: Japanese Film Classics

April 6–May 11, 2016

In this lecture/screening series, experts guide us in an exploration of key works of Japanese cinema.

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  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Branded to Kill

    • Wednesday, May 11 3:10 PM
    Seijun Suzuki
    Japan, 1967

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Lecture by Tom Vick
    Suzuki’s absurdist gangster thriller about an assassin who gets aroused by the smell of rice seems as wildly perverse now as it did in 1967, and has influenced filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino to John Woo.

  • When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

    • Wednesday, May 4 3:10 PM
    Mikio Naruse
    Japan, 1960

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Lecture by Miryam Sas
    Hideko Takamine portrays the consummate Naruse heroine: high-minded, determined, and out of her element in a sordid world. The film “could give heartbreak lessons to Fassbinder and Sirk” (Village Voice).

  • Yojimbo

    • Wednesday, April 27 3:10 PM
    Akira Kurosawa
    Japan, 1961

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Lecture by Susan Oxtoby
    Toshiro Mifune is a sly, amoral mercenary looking to make a fistful of ryo in a lawless town in Kurosawa’s tongue-in-cheek anti-epic, which inspired A Fistful of Dollars.

  • The Life of Oharu

    • Wednesday, April 20 3:10 PM
    Kenji Mizoguchi
    Japan, 1952

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Lecture by Alan Tansman
    The story of a noblewoman’s fall from grace becomes “perhaps the finest film made in any country about the oppression of women” (Joan Mellen) in the hands of director Mizoguchi and actress Kinuyo Tanaka.

  • Equinox Flower

    • Wednesday, April 13 3:10 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1958

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Lecture by Marilyn Fabe
    Modern girl Kinuyo Tanaka quietly rebels against her traditional parents’ plans in Ozu’s first color film. “Gentle and amused in the way that it acknowledges time’s passage [and] the changing of values” (NY Times).

  • A Hen in the Wind

    • Wednesday, April 6 3:10 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1948

    Lecture/screening class (3 hours). Special admission applies.

    Lecture by Susan Oxtoby. Response by Nathaniel Dorsky
    A POW comes home to discover that his wife has prostituted herself to pay their son’s hospital bills. “Ozu brilliantly and honestly confronts the postwar moment” (Joan Mellen).