PBS is broadcasting a new hour-long documentary on the 85 year life
and career of Japan's greatest filmmaker, and one of world cinema's
most creative and productive geniuses. It will air on CH 13 in the
NJ/NJ/CT region on Thursday, March 21st at 9:00 PM.

This link to a Press Release gives much information on Kurosawa and the making of the Great Performances program , with downloadable images, a filmography, credits and program notes:
http://www.thirteen.org/pressroom/great_performances/kurosawa/press_release.html

The program, in addition to film excerpts from films such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Ran, will feature interviews and comments from Machiko Kyo, Toshiro Mifune, and many other actors, directors, critics and scholars.

This is a great opportunity to relive some of the greatest films
and to learn about many Kurosawa works that we never had the opportunity to experience before. It should be a natural for recording!

I hope we might also receive reactions from some Japanese Film-techers to this program and its subjects.

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My parents first introduced my to his work when they took me along to see 'Dersu Urzala' at the age of 6. My parents initially feared that I would not be able to sit through it but on the contrary I found it fascinating and beautiful. I got to show the same movie years later, and it has lost none of its power or beauty.

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BTW Kurosawa once published a list of what he considered to be the 100 best films of all time. Perhaps fittingly, only a couple are Japanese, one of them being the animated My Neighbor Totoro (1988) by Hayao Miyazaki. Kurosawa loved the Catbus character in that film and lamented that talents like Miyazaki were going into animation instead of live-action. Today, Miyazaki is considered by many critics to be, not the Disney of Japan, but the Kurosawa of animation!

So who says Kurosawa's films weren't Japanese enough? (Jii-san gomen nasai!) Rashomon, Ikiru, The Hidden Fortress, Ran, Dreams... His films will always be amongst my personal live-action favorites, Japanese or otherwise. Long live Kurosawa!

Paul
Unemployed mercenary film/video projectionist/engineer
Roll 'em! Speed! Marker! Action! Cut! Print that! Next setup!
Repeat until dead.
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That resolution shocked me as much as the report that in one of the Nazi extermination camp, a group of Jews held an all-night trial,
charging God with abandoning his people. After the sentence--GUILTY
--the judge announced "It is time to say the morning 'Shma'" [Hear,
O Israel, The Lord Our God, the Lord is One!] So after having the audience struggle emotionally through four versions of a terrible crime, trying to find the truth, the priest and the peasant, grabbing
for the baby in fine Zen fashion, again flip the audience's belief
with faith in the possibility of human goodness.

For his time, Kurosawa was an innovator in film technique. I loved the way he would pan in very long focus, Mifune running through a crowded battle scene, in closeup, blurring the other combatants, yet staying with the hero. Or when he would dolly in swiftly while zooming out simultaneously, an unsettling experience for the viewer.
I was reading Japanese history when his samurai films were first
shown in the U.S., and the wars of the Shoguns seemed to come alive from his films. I thought of him as quintesentially Japanese, and am surprised to learn of his critics in Japan. It reminds me of comments I heard of the films of Satyajit Ray in India: "Ray's films
are not Indian, they are realism, and we in India have too much reality. We want our films to be fantasy. His films are not popular in India." At the time I was using Patha Panchali in my film classes, and was floored by that attitude.

It has been 4678 days since the last post.

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