Okinawa and its status is one of those difficult subjects not often discussed when considering it as an island paradise. Part Japanese holiday destination, part US army base, it is used and controlled by those other than Okinawans. In one of his lesser-known works, Nagisa Oshima explores Okinawa as the illegitimate child of distant parents, but one rich in culture.
Dear Summer Sister is screening at Japan Society
14-year-old Sunaoko (Hiromi Kurita) travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko (Lily) in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. On arrival, she meets a young tour guide and musician (Shoji Ishibashi) who translates Okinawan dialect for tourists. Searching for her brother’s mother, Tsuru (Akiko Koyama), it soon becomes clear that the tour guide is the brother she has been looking for. With the arrival of Sunaoko’s father Kikuchi (Hosei Komatsu), discussions...
Dear Summer Sister is screening at Japan Society
14-year-old Sunaoko (Hiromi Kurita) travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko (Lily) in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. On arrival, she meets a young tour guide and musician (Shoji Ishibashi) who translates Okinawan dialect for tourists. Searching for her brother’s mother, Tsuru (Akiko Koyama), it soon becomes clear that the tour guide is the brother she has been looking for. With the arrival of Sunaoko’s father Kikuchi (Hosei Komatsu), discussions...
- 5/6/2022
- by Andrew Thayne
- AsianMoviePulse
Perhaps best known to Western audiences for his films “Death by Hanging”, the erotic “In the Realm of the Senses” as well as the war film “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” which stars David Bowie, Nagisa Oshima’s 1969 drama “Boy” is maybe the Japanese director’s most approachable and straightforward work.
In 1966, a family of con artists are desperately trying to make ends meet. The father, Takeo (Fumio Watanabe), is a diabetic war veteran who routinely abuses his spouse, Takeko (Akiko Koyama), and his son Toshio (Tetsuo Abe), the child from a previous marriage. To earn money, he makes Takeko throw herself into traffic and fake injuries in hopes of extorting money from hapless drivers. When she becomes pregnant, however, he recruits Toshio to assume her role. Things go well at first until the boy is eventually caught, forcing the family to pack up and hurriedly move across the country.
Faced...
In 1966, a family of con artists are desperately trying to make ends meet. The father, Takeo (Fumio Watanabe), is a diabetic war veteran who routinely abuses his spouse, Takeko (Akiko Koyama), and his son Toshio (Tetsuo Abe), the child from a previous marriage. To earn money, he makes Takeko throw herself into traffic and fake injuries in hopes of extorting money from hapless drivers. When she becomes pregnant, however, he recruits Toshio to assume her role. Things go well at first until the boy is eventually caught, forcing the family to pack up and hurriedly move across the country.
Faced...
- 4/18/2022
- by Fred Barrett
- AsianMoviePulse
Ryuichi Sakamoto to serve as president of the jury, which also comprises Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Pff director Keiko Araki.
Japan’s Pia Film Festival (Pff) is launching a cinema award in honour of Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima, which is designed to recognise ‘next generation’ talents and give them exposure on the world stage.
Conceived by Oshima’s widow, actress Akiko Koyama, the Oshima Prize will be presented to young Japanese filmmakers who “following in the footsteps of Oshima, continue to take on challenges on an international scale and after making their commercial debuts”.
One of the masters of Japanese cinema,...
Japan’s Pia Film Festival (Pff) is launching a cinema award in honour of Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima, which is designed to recognise ‘next generation’ talents and give them exposure on the world stage.
Conceived by Oshima’s widow, actress Akiko Koyama, the Oshima Prize will be presented to young Japanese filmmakers who “following in the footsteps of Oshima, continue to take on challenges on an international scale and after making their commercial debuts”.
One of the masters of Japanese cinema,...
- 12/9/2019
- by 89¦Liz Shackleton¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
While Osamu Takahashi is not an unimportant figure in the Shochiku Nouvelle Vague movement, his contributions as writer and as Naoki Prize winner are more known than his cinematographic work. One could even argue that his greatest contribution to the Nouvelle Vague movement is not so much his debut narrative, but his fundamental role in the launch of the film journal Shichinin (The Seven) with his circle of fellow directors, which included Nagisa Oshima and Kiju Yoshida.
Despite his limited importance as director, it nevertheless remains valuable to return to and review his debut narrative, which, as it deals with sexual violence, fits perfectly within the Japanese Nouvelle Vague movement as such.
“Only She Knows” is screening as part of Japan Society:
On Christmas Eve, the whole police division is requested to attend a strategy meeting concerning a rapist murderer on the loose. Division Chief Kitae (Kappei Matsumoto) has...
Despite his limited importance as director, it nevertheless remains valuable to return to and review his debut narrative, which, as it deals with sexual violence, fits perfectly within the Japanese Nouvelle Vague movement as such.
“Only She Knows” is screening as part of Japan Society:
On Christmas Eve, the whole police division is requested to attend a strategy meeting concerning a rapist murderer on the loose. Division Chief Kitae (Kappei Matsumoto) has...
- 4/2/2019
- by Pieter-Jan Van Haecke
- AsianMoviePulse
With the exception of several crowd-pleasing samurai epics (like Zatoichi and Three Outlaw Samurai) and a few bargain-priced historical costume dramas (such as The Ballad of Narayama and Gate of Hell), the flow of newly released Japanese art films by the Criterion Collection has slowed to a trickle over the past five years or so. (And for the sake of politeness and avoiding pointless controversy, I won’t invoke Jellyfish Eyes in this argument either.) We’ve obviously enjoyed a steady stream of chanbara, Ozu and especially Kurosawa Blu-ray upgrades during this past half-decade, and there have been several outstanding Japanese sets recently issued as part of the Eclipse Series as well, but we really haven’t seen much else along these lines in the main lineup since Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko came out in the fall of 2011. That’s over 200 spine numbers ago! But I’m happy to report...
- 2/16/2016
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
You want radical? Look no further. Nagisa Oshima's near-legendary issue drama makes a wickedly frightening protest against the death penalty, but then proceeds into formal abstraction and the endorsement of a violent radical position. You can't find a political 'gauntlet picture' as jarring or as potent as this one. Death by Hanging Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 798 1968 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Kôshikei / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 16, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Do-yun Yu, Kei Sato, Fumio Watanabe, Toshiro Ishido, Masao Adachi, Rokko Toura, Hosei Komatsu, Masao Matsuda, Akiko Koyama. Cinematography Yasuhiro Yoshioka Film Editor Sueko Shiraishi Original Music Hikaru Hayashi Written by Michinori Fukao. Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura, Nagisa Oshima Produced by Masayuki Nakajima, Takuji Yamaguchi, Nagisa Oshima Directed by Nagisa Oshima
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet. Nagisa Oshima is a radical's radical, a cinema stylist completely committed to his politics -- which...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet. Nagisa Oshima is a radical's radical, a cinema stylist completely committed to his politics -- which...
- 2/2/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Nagisa Oshima movies: From Death by Hanging to Taboo [See previous post: "Nagisa Oshima: In the Realm of the Senses (Truly) Iconoclastic Filmmaker Dies."] Among Nagisa Oshima’s other seminal works are Death by Hanging (1968); and the Cannes Film Festival entries Empire of Passion (1978), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), Max Mon Amour (1986), and Taboo (1999), which turned out to be Oshima’s last effort. With the exception of Max Mon Amour, the Cannes titles were also nominated for multiple Japanese Academy Awards, including Best Picture. (Photo: Nagisa Oshima.) Much like In the Realm of the Senses, Death by Hanging was inspired by a real-life incident: the botched hanging of a young Korean man convicted of rape and murder. In Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, David Bowie plays a World War II prisoner of war who has a complex Billy Budd-like — desire/hate — relationship with a Japanese captain (played by rock star Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also composed the film’s score). Despite its title and the presence of Tatsuya Fuji,...
- 1/17/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Japanese film-maker best known for the sexually explicit In the Realm of the Senses and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, starring David Bowie
In a sense, it is unfortunate that the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who has died aged 80, was more infamous than famous, due to one film, In the Realm of the Senses (also known as Ai No Corrida, 1976). Although it was, for many, in the realms of pornography, the film was a serious treatment of the link between the political and the sexual, eroticism and death (previously dealt with in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris), and a breakthrough in the representation of explicit sex in mainstream art cinema. Like Bertolucci, Oshima was held and acquitted on an obscenity charge.
Based on a true cause célèbre, In the Realm of the Senses tells of a married man and a geisha, who retreat from the militarist Japan of 1936 into a world of their own,...
In a sense, it is unfortunate that the Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, who has died aged 80, was more infamous than famous, due to one film, In the Realm of the Senses (also known as Ai No Corrida, 1976). Although it was, for many, in the realms of pornography, the film was a serious treatment of the link between the political and the sexual, eroticism and death (previously dealt with in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris), and a breakthrough in the representation of explicit sex in mainstream art cinema. Like Bertolucci, Oshima was held and acquitted on an obscenity charge.
Based on a true cause célèbre, In the Realm of the Senses tells of a married man and a geisha, who retreat from the militarist Japan of 1936 into a world of their own,...
- 1/16/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Eclipse's Oshima's Outlaw Sixties DVD box set is the first serious attempt to represent Nagisa Oshima's 1960s filmography on North American home video. The marketing of this box tends to make Oshima seem like a Eastern Jean Luc-Godard, but like other members of the so-called Japanese New Wave, Oshima worked in a completely different aesthetic, cultural and political space.
Nagisa Oshima's feature film career can be roughly divided into three periods: Shochiko (1959-1960), Sozosha (1965-1972), and Euro-Japanese co-productions (1976-1986). The Eclipse box set presents five films from the beginning of the Sozosha period, including Pleasures of the Flesh (1965/B&W), Violence at Noon (1966/B&W), Sing a Song of Sex (1967/Color), Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967/B&W), and Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968/Color). These films make use key themes that Oshima would return to throughout his career like criminality, sexual deviance, the Japanese left, militarism, and Japanese-Korean relations. However,...
Nagisa Oshima's feature film career can be roughly divided into three periods: Shochiko (1959-1960), Sozosha (1965-1972), and Euro-Japanese co-productions (1976-1986). The Eclipse box set presents five films from the beginning of the Sozosha period, including Pleasures of the Flesh (1965/B&W), Violence at Noon (1966/B&W), Sing a Song of Sex (1967/Color), Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967/B&W), and Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968/Color). These films make use key themes that Oshima would return to throughout his career like criminality, sexual deviance, the Japanese left, militarism, and Japanese-Korean relations. However,...
- 5/24/2010
- Screen Anarchy
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