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“Pitfall” a movie that shares many similarities with “Woman of the Dunes” and Shohei Imamura’s works, was Hiroshi Teshigahara‘s feature debut and also marked the first of four collaborations with Kobo Abe, the aforementioned included. However, unlike the others, which are based on novels by Abe, “Pitfall” was originally a television play called “Purgatory” (Rengoku). The production had its share of problems, as Teshigahara often disagreed with his film crew, and fired two assistant directors who did not wish to include the rape scene in the movie. It was distributed by the Art Theatre Guild on a limited release, in one of the first distribution efforts of the company, and was later acquired by Toho which released it in the United States in 1964.

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Looking outside America this Oscar season, there are plenty of candidates for the Best International Feature award. You might gravitate to Latvia’s Cannes entry Flow, a dialogue-free animation in which a black cat, a bird and a ragtag band of other creatures fight for survival in a human-free world after a catastrophic flood. Or maybe you’ll fancy the chances of raucous Irish-language Sundance comedy Kneecap, a wildly stylized biopic of the English-baiting, all-male hip-hop trio from Belfast.

But these two are outliers; the international Oscar race this year is dominated by stories of women, from all over the world. For example, the U.K.’s Hindi-language drama Santosh, filmed in Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, finds a policeman’s widow thrown into her late husband’s world, where she must battle police indifference and solve the murder of a low-caste local girl. From Bulgaria there is Triumph, a political...

Comprising international premieres, short programs, and some of the country’s finest-ever films in new restorations, 2024’s Japan Cuts––running July 10-21 at New York’s Japan Society––is upon us. As one of North America’s sole festivals devoted to new voices in Japanese cinema, it’s likely your only opportunity to see many titles in a theatrical space. Though one can feel a bit dizzy looking through everything, we’re glad to distill it––from masters to nascent talents and, along the way, a few absolute classics given much-deserved restorations.

All the Long Nights (Shô Miyake)

Shô Miyake’s All the Long Nights is a film about small things: decency, kindness, why people help each other out, how those acts can inspire others. The first character we meet is Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi), a sensitive type who suffers from premenstrual syndrome. In the opening scene, this causes Misa to lose her cool at work,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDahomey.Mati Diop’s Dahomey (2024), a documentary about the repatriation of artifacts plundered by French colonists to the present-day Republic of Benin, won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. It is only the second film from the African continent to take the festival’s top prize.The Berlinale has filed criminal charges against activists who hacked the festival’s Instagram account on Sunday to post calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which the festival deemed “anti-Semitic.”The festival has also released a statement disavowing the acceptance speeches of award winners who used their platform to speak out against the occupation and war. Such speeches included those by Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau, whose Direct Action won Best Film in the Encounters section, and by Yuval Abraham,...

Each winter, we invite Notebook contributors to take part in our unique twist on the year-end poll. Rather than tally their favorite new releases from the year, they’re asked to creatively pair a new release with an older film they watched for the first time that year: a “fantasy double feature.” We’re delighted by the range of responses this year; this year’s doubles offer up inspired combinations of moving-image art that might otherwise slip through the cracks.We invite you to plunge into this collective viewing scrapbook, which captures our writers at their most imaginative, adventurous, and thoughtful—maybe it'll motivate you to test some of these out (or come up with your own) over the holidays.We hope you enjoy the read, and find our sixteenth year appropriately sweet!{{notebook_form}}Paul AttardNEW: Skinamarink + Old: Room Film 1973Homebound horror films shrouded in darkness, ones that transform...

While it's not very common, a number of movies have been nominated for Oscars in multiple years. As a general rule, movies can not be nominated at the Academy Awards one year and then come back another year to try again, even in another category. However, there are exceptions to the rule, mainly if the film's original nomination was in a category not requiring a U.S. release, and then their subsequent recognition came after its opening in America. This really only happens with movies initially submitted in the Best International Film category.

There are other movies that have received honors in multiple years at the Oscars but not necessarily in the form of nominations. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs broke Academy Awards rules by receiving a special Honorary Oscar in 1939, presented to Walt Disney with a unique statuette. The animated feature had previously been nominated in 1938 for Best Score.

Japan’s Hiroshi Teshigahara, who seemed on track for greatness after winning two Oscar nominations for “Woman in the Sands,” will be the subject of a San Sebastian Festival retrospective.

Nominated for best foreign-language film in 1964, and winning Teshigahara a best director Academy Award nomination a year later, “Woman in the Sands” was just Teshigahara’s second feature, a social and erotic allegory which yoked the political convictions of Teshigahara and screenwriter Kobo Abe, both members of Japan’s communist party in their youth, with Abe’s penchant for the darkly surreal.

Turning on an entomologist from Tokyo who discovers a young widow living at the bottom of an enormous sandpit on a deserted beach, it also won a Cannes Special Jury prize. Hailed as a masterpiece, and building on 1961’s “The Pitfall,” a political allegory which won Teshigahara fans, with Abe adapting his TV play, it looked like Teshigahara...

Twenty-five years after the international premiere of his graduation work “Banquet of The Beasts” in the Panorama section, and twenty-two after “Hole in the Sky”, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri is back in Berlin with the thriller “#Manhole” which celebrates its international premiere in the Berlinale Special program. In this one-man suspense drama, a relatively simple story of an unfortunate incident evolves into a film rich with unexpected twists.

“#Manhole” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase

On the evening before his wedding day, Shunsuke (Yuto Nakajima) walks into into his own stag party he was unaware of. The mood is excellent: as congratulations pour in, so do drinks. A bit wobbly after a drink too many in a pub in Shibuya district, Shunsuke falls inside a manhole, and wakes up injured and unable to climb back to the street. To make things worse, his cellphone Gps stops working and...

Twenty-five years after the international premiere of his graduation work “Banquet of The Beasts” in the Panorama section, and twenty-two after “Hole in the Sky”, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri is back in Berlin with the thriller “#Manhole” which celebrates its international premiere in the Berlinale Special program. In this one-man suspense drama, a relatively simple story of an unfortunate incident evolves into a film rich with unexpected twists.

#Manhole is screening at Berlinale

On the evening before his wedding day, Shunsuke (Yuto Nakajima) walks into into his own stag party he was unaware of. The mood is excellent: as congratulations pour in, so do drinks. A bit wobbly after a drink too many in a pub in Shibuya district, Shunsuke falls inside a manhole, and wakes up injured and unable to climb back to the street. To make things worse, his cellphone Gps stops working and a heavy rain starts falling making his situation more insufferable.

Japan boasts one of the most robust and oldest film industries in the world, with historian Yomota Inuhiko dating its origins as far back as 1896. With visionary filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki among the industry's most recognizable names, Japan has produced some truly extraordinary films. Beyond sweeping historical epics and fantasy fare sharing the country's extensive folklore, Japan has produced a growing number of dramas that have stood the test of time.

From slice-of-life portraits across Japanese history to biting commentaries on society, Japanese dramas widely feature precision in storytelling and deliberate pacing to meditate on its themes. For decades, cinema has become a place for Japanese artists to question and subvert cultural norms directly while exploring and pondering existential themes. With that all in mind, here are the 15 best Japanese drama movies, from avant-garde pieces to animated films that delve into more humanist subject matter, showcasing different...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Woman in the Dunes"

Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel

The Pitch: A bug-hunting schoolteacher finds himself stranded in a sandpit with a woman, at the mercy of demented villagers, and forced into a life of shoveling sand.

In Japan, where rural population decline is an ongoing problem, there are places in the countryside that will actually pay people to live there. As 2023 began, the BBC and CNN reported that the government has upped its incentive program to 1 million yen per child for families willing to move away from the crowded capital of Tokyo to less thriving towns.

The villagers in "Woman in the Dunes" have devised a different scheme. They prey on solo travelers like...

Ten years ago, there were five clear frontrunners for the Oscar for Best Director of 2012: Ben Affleck for “Argo,” Kathryn Bigelow for “Zero Dark Thirty,” Tom Hooper for “Les Misérables,” Ang Lee for “Life of Pi” and Steven Spielberg for “Lincoln. But when the nominations were announced, only Lee and Spielberg made the cut. Replacing Affleck, Bigelow and Hooper were Michael Haneke for “Amour,” David O. Russell for “Silver Linings Playbook” and Benh Zeitlin for “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Talk about an Oscar race going wild.

The lesson learned was that the Directors Branch of the Academy can be very unpredictable. They might overlook a big Hollywood star for helming a critical and commercial success, and instead go with an obscure director for their work on a tiny arthouse film. With that said, we should be prepared for some surprises in the directing category when the nominations are...

Malaysian filmmaker Woo Ming Jin, whose work has been showcased at the Busan International Film Festival from his first feature “Monday Morning Glory” (2005), is back with his latest feature “Stone Turtle.”

The film, which won the Fipresci Prize at Locarno earlier this year, follows a woman living in the peninsular Malaysian east coast, who gets entangled with a stranger who claims to be a turtle researcher, in a dangerous dance of duplicity and deception.

“Stone Turtle” originated from the time Woo spent at the east coast of Malaysia a few years ago, where he met some turtle egg poachers and villages that subsisted on this trade. He learned a lot about the region’s history, culture and way of life and this became his impetus for creating the protagonist of the film.

“I had always been drawn to the richness of Malaysian folklore and myths and felt they have not been depicted in cinema much.

Above: French grande for Love in the Afternoon (aka Chloé in the Afternoon) which was the opening night film of the 10th New York Film Festival. Designer tbd.In the catalogue for the 10th New York Film Festival in 1972, festival director Richard Roud looked back on the first decade of the NYFF, musing on the changes in cinema of the previous 10 years: “a greater freedom of subject matter,” “an accompanying new freedom of form,” the obsolescence of “the tightly plotted film,” the rise of personal filmmaking and the inroads of political cinema and documentary techniques into narrative film. He also muses on international movements: the snuffing out of the Czech Renaissance (there were no Czech films in the 1972 festival), the rise of New Hollywood and American independent cinema, and the ebbing of the movement that had in many ways defined the festival to that point, the French New Wave:Some of...

In Woo Ming Jing’s latest feature film “Stone Turtle” which world-premiered in Locarno’s International Competition, an immigrant woman takes revenge in her own hands after her tormentor from the past appears to challenge her. It is a feminist tale in which folklore, dance and genre tropes play a significant role in layering the non-linear plot. Parts of the events are getting re-told, re-plotted or even re-dreamt to steer the narrative in other directions. Woo makes no secret of his biggest influence – Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day” (1993), and even the Netflix series “Russian Doll” which is given in the repetitiveness of certain events that get altered by Zahara when she wants to influence the now by changing the past.

“Stone Turtle” screened in Locarno Film Festival

Regarding other filmic influences, they mainly come from Japanese sources, and this is not just the case with the animated part drawn by Paul Williams,...

In this hour-long mix devoted to musician Tôru Takemitsu’s soundtrack oeuvre, the Japanese master’s varied body of scoring sounds and collaborations is in full effect, offering a spectrum of different emotions and genres.Takemitsu was a pivotal figure in modern classical music and much of his work continues to influence the contemporary canon today. Early in his career the composer was exposed to Western sounds while working a job for the US Armed Forces, and many of his groundbreaking compositions synthesized Western and Eastern sensibilities. Membership in the avant-garde Jikken Kōbō (an experimental music workshop formed in Japan’s postwar 1950s) led to an interest in and passion for the work of John Cage and concepts such as musique concrète, which can be heard throughout Takemitsu’s singular sound. Additionally, images of Japanese gardens, water, and the poems of Emily Dickinson inspired the tonalities of Takemitsu’s sound,...

In 1966, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara broke new ground as the first Asian Best Director Oscar contender with his bid for “Woman in the Dunes.” He was also the 10th Japanese male nominee in any category, the first of whom was production designer Eddie Imazu. Twenty years later, his countryman Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran” brought him his first and only directing notice after four decades in the business. Now, Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) has been added to this all too short list of Japanese directing nominees and could become the first one to pull off a win.

See 2022 Oscar nominations: Full list of nominees in all 23 categories

Hamaguchi is the only first-timer in this year’s directing lineup, which also includes Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”), Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”), Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) and Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”). Spielberg has already competed here seven times and...

The 2022 Oscar nominees for Best Director are Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”), Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”), Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”), and Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”). Our odds currently show that Campion (3/1) is most likely to win, followed in order by Branagh (4/1), Spielberg (9/2), Anderson (9/2), and Hamaguchi (9/2).

All but Hamaguchi are previous directing nominees. Spielberg has already collected a pair of trophies for helming “Schindler’s List” (1994) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1999). His five other bids came for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1978), “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1982), “E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1983), “Munich” (2006), and “Lincoln” (2013). His initial victory was against Campion on her first outing for “The Piano.” Branagh was recognized here in 1990 for “Henry V,” while Anderson has two past directing bids to his name for “There Will Be Blood” (2008) and “Phantom Thread” (2018).

All five of these contenders are nominated in at least one other category this year.

by Earl Jackson

In 1969, Masahiro Shinoda released “Double Suicide”, his version of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s bunraku (puppet) play, “The Love Suicides Amajima” [心中天網島]. The film was striking in its use of the black-hooded puppeteers, the kuroko, to move the actors and change the deliberately artificial sets. The film was a hit with the international art film crowd in that it proved that Japanese avant-garde narrative cinema was not limited to Hiroshi Teshigahara’s adaptations of Kobo Abe novels. In later years, it would serve as a viewer-friendly introduction to the New Wave because, unlike the more difficult works of Kiju Yoshida or Nagisa Oshima, “Double Suicide” -to repurpose Gertrude Stein’s judgment of James Joyce – was the experimental film that anyone could understand.

In 2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi takes up the challenge of integrating classical theater with contemporary cinema again, in his use of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” in his film “Drive My Car”. At first glance,...

Twenty-eight years ago, Steven Spielberg (“Schindler’s List’) and Jane Campion (“The Piano”) were the favorites in the Best Director race at the Oscars. Spielberg won for the first time back then with Campion picking up the original screenplay Academy Award. And now they are facing off again.

Spielberg is nominated as Best Director for the eighth time for his remake of the musical “West Side Story” and Campion is up for her Western “The Power of the Dog.” Two of the other contenders for Best Director — Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”) and Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”) — are previous nominees (it’s been a long -and record breaking-32 years between Branagh’s bids). The fifth nominee is an Oscar rookie, Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi for “Drive My Car.”

Take a read of the Best Director Oscar nominees biographies and then make your prediction as to who will prevail on March 27.

Paul Thomas Anderson,...

Though the diversity of this year’s Oscar nominee list didn’t reach last year’s record heights, the highlights include four Black actors being recognized along with LGBTQ and deaf actors, as well as female and Asian filmmakers in the Best Director race.

In the Best Actor race, Will Smith is considered a major contender to become only the fifth Black actor to win the award for his performance as Serena and Venus Williams’ father Richard in the inspirational sports film “King Richard.” If he wins, he would join a list that includes the late Sidney Poitier, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker, and Denzel Washington, the latter of whom also earned his ninth acting Oscar nomination this year for “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”

The Best Supporting Actress race also sees Smith’s “King Richard” co-star Aunjanue Ellis among the list of contenders, along with Afrolatina star Ariana DeBose for her...

The public considers the Academy Awards as a Hollywood event. True, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is headquartered in Southern California, and most of the best pic contenders are American and/or in the English language. But Oscar history proves they have been an international event from the beginning.

In the first year (1927-28), there were nominations for directors Herbert Brenon (born in Ireland) and Lewis Milestone (born in Moldova), plus a special award to Charlie Chaplin (from the U.K.).

The next five years saw two noms apiece for directors Ernst Lubitsch (Germany) and Josef von Sternberg (Austria). And the second best actress Academy Award was given to Canadian Mary Pickford.

The early years of Oscar featured a slew of non-Americans. Aside from mega-star Chaplin, the list of early Academy Award winners includes Emil Jannings, George Arliss (U.K.), Claudette Colbert (raised in the U.S. but...

By Elise Shick

The artistic zeitgeist of the Japanese New Wave from the late 1950s through the early 1970s was formed by the proliferation of avant-garde and experimental Japanese films that pursued radical inquests into political, social and cultural changes[1] as one can study via the philosophical and aesthetic presentations, particularly in the works of Nagisa Oshima, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Shuji Terayama and Toshio Matsumoto. The emergence of Japanese ‘I-films’ (personal documentaries) in the early 1970s as the out-turn of the Japanese New Wave marked a historical turning point from public films to the private cinema of personal expressions and individuality[2]. Inspired by Jonas Mekas’s “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1973), the poet and independent filmmaker Shirouyasu Suzuki’s amateur home movie “Impression of Sunset” (1975) and his later distinctive work “15 Days” (1980) are amongst the personal documentaries that divert from conventional documentary filmmaking and turn the fascination of ‘self’ into...

Translated by Lukasz Mankowski

Katsuhide Motoki, born in Toyama Prefecture in 1963, studied at Waseda University and in the United States. In 1987, he began working as an assistant director at Shochiku for Keisuke Kinosita and Hiroshi Teshigahara, among others. He had his directorial debut in 1998 with “Tenamonya Shosha”. His comedy “Samurai Hustle” received an award at the 2015 Japan Academy Awards, while his fame grew even bigger with “Recall”. Motoki also works as a producer (e.g. Gonin).

On the occasion of “Angry Rice Wives” screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival, we speak with him about the place of women in Japanese society then and now, the events that inspired the film, the cast and Mao Inoue, his visual approach, and many other topics.

What was the inspiration behind shooting Angry Rice Wives?

Since Japan is a country where there is still a strong impression of the dominance of men over women,...

For the first time, there are two Asian Americans in Oscar’s director race: Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”). That’s notable, but it’s even more extraordinary considering only four Asians were ever nominated as director before this.

The four predecessors were spread over the decades: Hiroshi Teshigahara; Akira Kurosawa; M. Knight Shyamalan; and Ang Lee. Lee has chalked up three noms for directing, with wins for 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” and 2012’s “The Life of Pi”; he also scored two other noms as a producer.

Following the four key wins last year for Bong Joon Ho and “Parasite,” it seems that Oscar is on a roll. If so, it’s about time.

On Oct 29, 1976, Variety ran a full-page ad under the headline “We are not all alike.” In an open letter, Asian Americans were seeking more diversity in roles, tired of being relegated to “sinister villains,...

The 2021 Oscar nominees for Best Director are Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”), Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), David Fincher (“Mank”), Thomas Vinterberg (“Another Round”), and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”). Our odds currently show that Zhao (31/10) will be the winner, followed in order by Chung (4/1), Fennell (9/2), Fincher (9/2), and Vinterberg (9/2).

Fincher previously earned bids for directing “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2009) and “The Social Network” (2011). The rest of this year’s contenders are first-time Oscar nominees. This is the first such occurrence since 2000, when Lasse Hallström (“The Cider House Rules”) stood out as the only previous nominee in his lineup. Chung, Fennell, and Zhao have all earned notices for writing their films’ screenplays, while the latter two are also up for Best Picture as producers. Zhao nabbed a fourth bid in the Best Film Editing category.

This year’s lineup is historic in that it is the first to ever include two female directors.

Among the Oscar nominations surprises every year is the Best Director lineup. Remember when Steven Spielberg (“The Color Purple”), Ron Howard (“Apollo 13”) and Ben Affleck (“Argo”) all won at the Directors Guild of America Awards but were snubbed by the directors branch of the academy. This year DGA nominee Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) was likewise left off the list of Oscar contenders. He was replaced by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg for his superb “Another Round,” which also picked up a bid for Best International Feature. He joins a long roster of Best Director nominees for films other than in English.

The academy first embraced international filmmakers in the 1960s. Italian auteur Federico Fellini was nominated for his 1961 classic “La Dolce Vita.” He contended again two years later for “8 1/2.” He reaped two more bids for “Fellini Satyricon” (1970) and “Amarcord’ (1975).

Predict the 2021 Oscars winners through...

The nominations for the 78th annual Golden Globe Awards left much to be desired when it came to representation and inclusion this morning, but there were some strides worth celebrating when it came to diverse nominees. One notable nod was for Nomadland filmmaker Chloé Zhao, who became the first director of Asian descent to receive a Golden Globe nomination.

Chloe “Magic Hour” Zhao’s Nomadland starring Frances McDormand (who was also nominated for her performance in the film) has already garnered critical praise since debuting simultaneously at the Toronto Film Festival (where it won the People’s Choice Award) and the Venice Film Festival (where it won the Golden Lion), making it the first film to get the top prize at both festivals. With that kind of fuel in its tank, it became an awards season front-runner and began...

An unsung eccentric of Japanese cinema is Teruo Ishii, referred to in his native country as ‘the King of Cult,’ whose forays into Ere Guro (erotic grotesque) cinema play like the exploitational love child of the cinematic hits by Hiroshi Teshigahara and Yasuzo Masumura. Many of the titles from his prolific career remain largely unavailable in the West, but Arrow Video continues to recuperate his work with the re-release of 1969’s Inferno of Torture, which, as its title indicates, is a violent, torture-porn narrative chock full of memorable items hellbent on shock value.

Perhaps best known for his titles Blind Woman’s Curse (1970), which was headlined by Meiko Kaji (she of the Female Prisoner Scorpion fame), or his Island of Dr.…...

By Nicholas Poly

After three massively successful collaborations in every single artistic (and not only) aspect, the collaboration led by Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobo Abe & Toru Takemitsu came to what’s meant to be its final installment. This happens while the still hot and vividly ‘redish’ summer of 1968 takes place and through the release of the not so renowned title that ‘The Man without a Map’ is. Their overall collaboration has already bloomed within a precise time frame of almost 6 years (which translates as an exact 2 year gap between every film). Abe’s novels for ‘Woman in The Dunes’, ‘The Face of Another’ and ‘The Man without A Map’ along with ‘Pitfall’s screenplay were usually published almost a year before the shooting, followed by his theatrical adaptation. As a result, Teshigahara and cinematographer Akira Uehara, along with the visionary avant–garde composer Toru Takemitsu, the crucial link between the first...

It is most certainly no secret that visiting at least one of the houses, parks or cathedrals designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí is pretty much a must when visiting Barcelona. Houses like the Casa Milá or the unfinished Colonia Güell are among some of the most amazing, breathtaking pieces of modern architecture. However, both of them pale in comparison to the sheer scale and splendor of the La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s most famous work as well as one of Barcelona’s most famous sights, if the line of visitors every morning is any indicator. Gaudí’s has excited and impressed many, among them Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara who has repeatedly expressed the profound effect Gaudí’s designs had on him, which he even associated with with his father Sofu Teshigahara and his work as an artist.

In 1984, Teshigahara would once again visit Barcelona, this time...

In his development as an artist, the importance of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s father Sofu Teshigahara cannot be underestimated. Founder of the Sogestsu-ryu, a school of ikebana, as well as an important artist who held international exhibitions, meeting famous figures of the European art world, such as Salvador Dali. His work as an artist stems from the idea that each material, like wood, stone or iron, contains life, wild, untamed life which is a quality he wanted to convey in his work as a sculptor. In his short film “Sculptures of Sofu – Vita” his son Hiroshi observes his father preparing for an exhibition and preparing a sculpture in his workshop, but most importantly, he explores the dimensions and layers of his father’s work, keeping in mind the concept of wildness in these sculptures and installations.

During the roughly 17 minutes of this short film, the most significant discovery...

To mark the release of The Criterion Collection’s March releases, we’ve been given a bundle of Antonio Gaudi, Anatomy of a Murder, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman to give away on Blu-ray.

Antonio Gaudi. Less a documentary than a visual poem, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s film takes viewers on a tour of Gaudí’s truly spectacular architecture, including his massive, still-unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona.

Anatomy Of A Murder stars James Stewart as a small-town Michigan lawyer who takes on a difficult case. This is a gripping, envelope-pushing courtroom potboiler, the most popular film from Hollywood provocateur Otto Preminger.

The French Lieutenant’S Woman, a postmodern masterpiece that had been considered unfilmable. Starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, it’s a beguiling, intellectually nimble feat of filmmaking, starring a pair of legendary actors in early leading roles.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only...

A hypnotic homage serving as part-travelogue, part visionary curation of Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi’s (1852-1926) masterworks in Barcelona, Japanese auteur Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1984 documentary on the artist will reveal little about either its subject or its director beyond the latter’s loving penchant for the former’s achievements. Gaudi, a founder of Catalan Modernism and eventually what became known as the Modernista movement, is the creator of, among many idiosyncratic structures, Spain’s most visited touristic attraction, the unfinished church of the Sagrada Familia (a visual exploration of which is where Teshigahara’s film ends). A beautiful rendering of Barcelona’s exceptional landscapes, the trance-like documentary is enhanced by an exceptional, often moody score from Shinji Hori, Kuroda Mori and Toru Takemitsu (who scored Teshigahara’s 1964 masterpiece Woman in the Dunes (read review) as well as Kurosawa’s 1985 Ran and the Philip Kaufman feature Rising Sun, 1993).…

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As much as I would like to stay optimistic about this film by the Japanese avant-garde film director Hiroshi Teshigahara, it is essentially an exploration of the meaninglessness of life and draws a sort of parallel with the myth of Sisyphus in its overarching theme of existential crisis throughout the film. The predicament in which we find the schoolteacher and part-time entomologist trapped in, when he is given a place of shelter to spend the night after missing the last bus back to town, chillingly resembles our own helpless obligation to continue in our daily monotonous routines without any greater reason than to simply survive. The rhetorical question raised by him later on, seems to be directed at us as to whether we struggle to survive or survive to struggle.

However, the significance of this film, lies not just in the visual depiction of the harsh reality...

Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”) and Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) are both in the hunt for Best Director at the Oscars, and both of their candidacies would be historic. If they both make the cut, it would be the first time in history that two Asian filmmakers are nominated for the award at the same time.

As it stands there have only been three Oscar nominees for Best Director of Asian descent. Hiroshi Teshigahara was the first: the Japanese filmmaker was nominated for “Woman in the Dunes” (1965). He was followed by another Japanese director: Akira Kurosawa, arguably the most famous Asian filmmaker in cinema history, who earned his first and only Oscar nom in this category for “Ran” (1985). Kurosawa was given an Honorary Oscar soon thereafter (1990).

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Then came Oscar’s most successful Asian director. Taiwanese Ang Lee earned his first nomination for “Crouching Tiger,...

Tatsuya Nakadai, one of Japan's greatest actors who worked with several of the country's most notable filmmakers, is set to receive the lifetime achievement award at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

An icon of Japanese cinema, Nakadai's seven-decade-long career has seen him star in films that have become part of the cultural fabric in Japan and proved hugely influential internationally.

Nakadai worked with several of Japan's best-ever filmmakers, including Hiroshi Teshigahara (The Face of Another), Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs), Kihachi Okamoto (Kill! and The Sword of Doom), Hideo Gosha (Goyokin), Shirō ...

Tatsuya Nakadai, one of Japan's greatest actors who worked with several of the country's most notable filmmakers, is set to receive the lifetime achievement award at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

An icon of Japanese cinema, Nakadai's seven-decade-long career has seen him star in films that have become part of the cultural fabric in Japan and proved hugely influential internationally.

Nakadai worked with several of Japan's best-ever filmmakers, including Hiroshi Teshigahara (The Face of Another), Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs), Kihachi Okamoto (Kill! and The Sword of Doom), Hideo Gosha (Goyokin), Shirō ...

Machiko Kyo, an actress who starred in some of the most internationally acclaimed Japanese films of the postwar era, died in Tokyo on Sunday at age 95, her former studio Toho announced Tuesday. The cause of death was heart failure.

Born in Osaka in 1924 as Motoko Yano, she joined the Osaka Shochiku Girls Opera in 1936 and, using the stage name Machiko Kyo, the Daiei studio in 1949. Though viewed by studio boss Masaichi Nagata as a Japanese answer to the voluptuous Hollywood sirens of the era, she first came to attention of the world as the sexually assaulted wife of a murdered samurai in Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (1950). The winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, the film brought not only Kyo and Kurosawa but also Japanese cinema to the attention of the West.

Kyo followed up with starring roles in Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu” (1953) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s “Gate of Hell...

There are a lot of Oscar firsts surrounding Alfonso Cuaron’s acclaimed Mexican drama, “Roma.” History will be made if it wins Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film, as well as being the first movie in Spanish and Mixtec languages to take home the top Academy Award.

With history “Roma” on the cusp of rewriting the Oscar history book, let’s look back at some foreign language Oscar firsts.

The first foreign film to earn an Oscar nomination was Rene Clair’s delightful French satire “A Nous La Liberte” for Best Art Drection in the ceremony’s fifth year.

It was 80 years ago that the academy nominated a foreign-language film for the Best Picture Oscar when Jean Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece “Grand Illusion,” was one of 10 nominees for the top prize. Though the film lost to Frank Capra’s “You Can’t Take It With you,” the French drama...

BAMcinématek is hosting a 10-film series exploring Japanese art and folklore post World War II called Ghosts and Monsters: Postwar Japanese Horror starting this Friday, October 26th through November 1st. Also in today's Highlights: Dermot Mulroney joins the cast of Trick and an interview with Ted Welch and Chris Blake from All Light Will End.

Ghosts and Monsters: Postwar Japanese Horror Screening Details: "From Friday, October 26 through Thursday, November 1, BAMcinématek presents Ghosts and Monsters: Postwar Japanese Horror, a series of 10 films showcasing two strands of Japanese horror films that developed after World War II: kaiju monster movies and beautifully stylized ghost stories from Japanese folklore.

The series includes three classic kaiju films by director Ishirô Honda, beginning with the granddaddy of all nuclear warfare anxiety films, the original Godzilla (1954—Oct 26). The kaiju creature features continue with Mothra (1961—Oct 27), a psychedelic tale of a gigantic prehistoric and long dormant moth larvae...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This July will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Saturday, July 1 Changing Faces

What does a face tell us even when it’s disguised or disfigured? And what does it conceal? Guest curator Imogen Sara Smith, a critic and author of the book In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City, assembles a series of films that revolve around enigmatic faces transformed by masks, scars, and surgery, including Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966).

Tuesday, July 4 Tuesday’s Short + Feature: Premature* and Ten*

Come hitch a ride with Norwegian director Gunhild Enger and the late Iranian master...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This April will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Monday, April 3 The Chaos of Cool: A Tribute to Seijun Suzuki

In February, cinema lost an icon of excess, Seijun Suzuki, the Japanese master who took the art of the B movie to sublime new heights with his deliriously inventive approach to narrative and visual style. This series showcases seven of the New Wave renegade’s works from his career breakthrough in the sixties: Take Aim at the Police Van (1960), an off-kilter whodunit; Youth of the Beast (1963), an explosive yakuza thriller; Gate of Flesh (1964), a pulpy social critique; Story of a Prostitute (1965), a tragic romance; Tokyo Drifter...

Above: Czech poster for Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, Italy, 1968).As I’m sure I’ve said before, the world of Czech movie posters is never less than an embarrassment of riches. I keep discovering new artists that I was never aware of previously, all with an impressive body of work behind them. The other day, as I was looking through the new acquisitions of my favorite poster shop, Posteritati, I came across this striking poster for Once Upon a Time in the West: a fascinating combination of bold color, eccentric collage, pop art elements and unusual typography. I wasn’t aware of the name of Stanislav Vajce before that but a quick search on the store's website and elsewhere revealed a wild array of some of the most exciting and inventive Czech posters I have seen in a while. As with so many of...

In this episode of CriterionCast Chronicles, Ryan is joined by David Blakeslee, and Scott Nye to discuss the Criterion Collection releases for August 2016.

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Episode Links Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (2015) Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words on iTunes Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words: A Full Picture of a Life – From the Current Ingrid Bergman, Filmmaker – From the Current A Taste of Honey A Taste of Honey (1961) A Taste of Honey on iTunes A Taste of Honey: Northern Accents – From the Current Morrissey’s Taste for Shelagh Delaney – From the Current 10 Things I Learned: A Taste of Honey – From the Current Woman in the Dunes Woman in the Dunes (1964) Woman in the Dunes on iTunes Watch Woman in the Dunes | Hulu Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara The Spectral Landscape of Teshigahara, Abe, and...

The Criterion Collection have just released 1964's Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna), which was --- and is --- heralded as one of the art house films of the 1960s. As a result, Teshigahara earn an Academy Award nomination for best director. A ton has been written on this film by film scholars far more knowledgable than I, so I'll stick to the basics here.   Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, Woman in the Dunes stars Eiji Okada as a teacher and amateur entomologist from Tokyo who gets trapped at the bottom of sand dune. He's on the hunt to find and classify a rare beetle, but the last bus out leaves him stranded.The man finds a place to stay for the night, but unbeknown to...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.

The Nice Guys (Shane Black)

It’s been over 40 years since Chinatown, and roughly the same amount of time separates the events of that film from those of The Nice Guys, another tale of a private detective in Los Angeles taking on an initially simple case which leads him to a vast, environmentally centered criminal conspiracy. The Nice Guys even carries on Chinatown’s heartbeat of individual helplessness when confronted with the casual body disposal of profit-hungry industrialists.

By Raymond Benson

“Sand In Your...”

By Raymond Benson

One of the hallmarks of 1960s art house cinema was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, adapted by Japanese author/playwright Kōbō Abe from his own 1962 novel. The picture won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and was nominated that same year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. The following year, Teshigahara was nominated for Best Director (but lost to Robert Wise for The Sound of Music).

This is avant-garde cinema at its finest—or perhaps its most tedious, depending on your taste.

The story is straight-forward. Niki (played by Eiji Okada, the male lead from Hiroshima mon amour), a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist (he studies bugs), has ventured to a desert-like area of Japan (does one exist?) near the sea to find specific species of insects. He is stranded and needs a place to stay overnight.

Japanese art filmmaking writ large by director Hiroshi Teshigahara: a strange allegorical fantasy about a man imprisoned in a sand pit, and compelled to make a primitive living with the woman who lives there. Perhaps it's about marriage... Woman in the Dunes Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 394 1964 / B&W / 1:33 full frame / 148 min. / Suna no onna / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Hiroko Ito Production Design Totetsu Hirakawa, Masao Yamazaki Produced by Tadashi Oono, Iichi Ichikawa Cinematography Hiroshi Segawa Film Editor Fuzako Shuzui Original Music Toru Takemitsu Written by Kobo Abe Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

In the 1960s the public interest in art cinema reached out beyond France and Italy, finally giving an opening for more exotic fare from Japan. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara earned his moment in the spotlight with 1964's Woman in the Dunes, an adaptation of a book by Kobo Abe.

There are many names that come to mind when one looks back at the Japanese New Wave era: Nagisa Oshima, Koreyoshi Kurahara, Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, and many, many more. The movement truly began with the adaptation of Shintaro Ishihara’s novel Crazed Fruit, released with the same name by director Ko Nakahira in his 1956 film. The film would kickoff a movement, a collective stream of films that juxtaposed a time in Japanese history where the traditional society of Japan clashed with the coming of a more contemporary way of living. The American occupation ended in 1952, bringing forth a difficult period for the Japanese individual and the struggle for the realization of purpose in a changing country.

One cannot discuss the Japanese New Wave without Hiroshi Teshigahara and his collaborations with Japanese writer Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Teshigahara didn’t make many films during this period of extreme...