Throughout September and October, BFI Southbank will celebrate the astounding films of Japan’s foremost modern master Nagisa Oshima, with a full retrospective of his films including an extended run of In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no Corrida, 1975); plus a rare opportunity to see a selection of television work from the ‘outlaw’ director who spearheaded Japan’s new wave.
One of the crucial differences that sets Nagisa Oshima apart from other great Japanese film-makers is that he has never accepted that he is defined merely by his own cultural identity. Constantly swimming against the tide, Oshima doesn’t accept consensus views on anything. Instead, he faces up to contradictions and insists on thinking his own way through them. This contrariness is reflected in his films as, in the 1960s and fired up by his earlier experiences as a student radical, he quickly established himself as a one-man ‘new wave’ in Japanese cinema.
Initially obsessed with the idea of revolution, many of the early films deal more or less directly with the failure of the Left, and ask why campaigns often miss their targets and why some movements tear themselves apart. Gradually, as his faith in revolution faded, he turned to other ways of attacking Japan’s body politic, focusing on the plight of the country’s most discriminated-against minority, Korean immigrants, and taking a more direct approach to the two issues which disrupt the cohesive surface of Japanese society: sex and crime.
This two-part season will include all of his feature films as well as some of his equally personal TV work. Part One kicks off with the four incendiary movies he made for Shochiku in 1959/60; A Town of Love and Hate (Ai to Kibo no Machi, 1959), Cruel Story of Youth (Taiyo no Hakaba, 1960), The Sun’s Burial (Taiyo no Hakaba, 1960) and Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no Yoru to Kiri, 1960) before examining his achievement as an independent film-maker with work including Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Senjo no Merry Christmas, 1983) and climaxing with Gohatto (1999), the ‘gay samurai’ movie he willed himself into recovery to make after suffering a debilitating stroke. This retrospective includes many of the electrifying movies which helped shape our sense of what cinema is – and should be.
Programme:
Oshima and the Art of Transgression: An Introduction
In the 60s and 70s Nagisa Oshima was as famous as Godard, and no less influential. If he’s faded from public view in recent years, that’s only because his work has been hard to see. Using a wealth of rare clips, Tony Rayns introduces our two-month retrospective with an account of the director’s ‘outlaw’ status, the origins of Japan’s ‘new wave’ and Oshima’s reasons for focusing on sex and crime.
Mon 7 Sept 18:20 NFT2
Tickets £5
A Town of Love and Hope Ai to Kibo no Machi
Japan 1959. With Hiroshi Fujikawa, Yuko Mochizuki, Fumio Watanabe. 62min. EST
Masao, a teenager in hicksville, earns pin-money by selling (and re-selling) a homing pigeon; he sees a way out of poverty when he befriends rich girl Kyoko – until his ‘crime’ is discovered. More seeds of rebellion are sown in the short Yunbogi’s Diary (Yunbogi no Nikki, 1965, 30min), Oshima’s paean to the revolutionary potential of Korean street-boys.
Sat 12 Sept 18:40 NFT2
Thu 17 Sept 20:50 NFT2*
*Introduction by Alexander Jacoby
Cruel Story of Youth Seishun Zankoku Monogatari
Japan 1960. With Yusuke Kawazu, Miyuki Kuwano, Fumio Watanabe. 96min. EST
Shot with fingertip-held freedom in colour and ’Scope, Oshima’s second feature is a nihilistic account of delinquency. The volatile Kiyoshi has his girlfriend pose as ‘available’ so that he can scam potential rapists for hush-money. Both of them eventually learn the hard way that their ‘freedom’ is illusory. Less shocking for the sex and violence than for the amorality.
Sun 13 Sept 16:00 NFT2
Tue 15 Sept 20:50 NFT2
The Sun’s Burial Taiyo no Hakaba
Japan 1960. With Masahiko Tsugawa, Kayoko Honoo, Isao Sasaki. 87min.
Oshima followed up the huge of Cruel Story of Youth with this picture of life in Kamagasaki, nightmarish slum suburb of which is full of reminders of urban ruins, thieving, scavenging, black markets in birth certificates human blood. Hard to imagine scathing portrait of Japan in 1960, a cool, analytic intelligence underpins the horrors.
Sun 13 Sept 20:50 NFT2
Wed 16 Sept 20:50 NFT1
Night and Fog in Japan Nihon no Yoru to Kiri
Japan 1960. With Fumio Watanabe, Miyuki Kuwano, Masahiko Tsugawa 107min. EST. PG
Set at a wedding party and composed in just 43 stylised sequence-shots, Oshima’s fourth feature dramatises the bitter conflicts between old and new factions of the Left in 1960. An undeniably tough watch, but its anti-Stalinist vehemence remains highly potent. Shochiku found a pretext to withdraw it from theatres after three days; Oshima left the company soon after.
Sat 5 Sept 14:00 NFT1
Mon 21 Sept 18:20 NFT3*
*Passport to Cinema screening; Introduced by Isolde Standish
