The 1960s have been a decisive period for the arts in many cultures. While some were looking for different formal approaches to deal with the issues of the times, others were looking back in order to re-assess and evaluate their countries history, which, to this point, had not been done before. Director Yasuzo Masumura belongs to the latter category, especially when considering his output in 1966 alone with an impressive crime drama such as “Irezumi” dealing with misogyny and toxic power structures as well as “Red Angel”, a powerful narrative about war and what it takes from people. In between, you find “Nakano Spy School” (also known as “The School of Spies”), a feature about how the Imperial Japanese Army Nakano School was founded, but also about the indoctrination and emotional manipulation of people to make them follow ideological goals.

Nakano Spy School is screening at Camera Japan

Jiro (Raizo Ichikawa...

Junichiro Tanizaki‘s novel “Manji,” which translates to “Swastika” and later given the English title “Quicksand,” is a popular erotic story of obsession, jealousy, and destruction surrounding a four-way bisexual love affair that develops between upper-class citizens, the four lovers meant to comprise the Buddhist swastika symbolically. This iconic literary work has seen numerous film adaptations throughout the years. However, the most famous and arguably best one comes from director Yasuzo Masumura with his 1964 classic “Manji,” also known by the titles “Swastika” and “All Mixed Up.” This version would notably have a screenplay written by Kaneto Shindo, who international moviegoers will best remember for directing the horror masterpiece “Onibaba.”

Manji is screening at Camera Japan

Plotwise, married woman and artist Sonoko Kakiuchi is unhappy with her marriage to her husband, Kotaro. While attending a private art school, she meets fellow student Mitsuko Tokumitsu, whose beauty and devilish charm entices Sonoko.

“The Wife’s Confession” (also known as “A Wife Confesses”) is a courtroom drama directed by Yasuzo Masumura, who worked at Daiei Film alongside Kenji Mizoguchi or Kon Ichikawa, but to this day is not as recognizable as other post-war Japanese filmmakers. Although the leading actress, Ayako Wakao, won the award for the Best Actress in 1962 at Kinema Junpo Awards, and Blue Ribbon Awards, the movie gained popularity only in the 21st century. It was screened at the 17th Athens International Film Festival, the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival, and the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The Wife’s Confession is screening at Camera Japan

The story, written by Masato Ide based on the novel by Masaya Maruyama, presents a trial – a young woman, Ayako (Ayako Wakao), is accused of murdering her husband (Eitaro Ozawa) while on a mountaineering expedition. The alleged motive for this crime is her desire to escape...

While its often the world premieres that get the most buzz out of any major film festival, look to their restorations lineup (if they are smart enough to have one), and a treasure trove of classics sure to be better than most premieres await. Ahead of their official lineup being unveiled on July 23, the Venice Classics slate is here, featuring films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fritz Lang, Frederick Wiseman, Howard Hawks, Nagisa Ōshima, Anthony Mann, Lina Wertmüller, and many more.

“The programme of Venice Classics includes the commemoration of several important anniversaries.” said Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “First and foremost, the centennial of the birth of Marcello Mastroianni, the most beloved and celebrated Italian actor in the world, whom we will see in The Night (La notte), one of Michelangelo Antonioni’s finest films. It has been fifty years since the death of Vittorio De Sica, who in The Gold of Naples...

Venice Classics will screen restorations of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Night and Vittorio De Sica’s The Gold Of Naples as part of an 18-film programme at the 81st Venice Film Festival (August 28-Septemer 7).

The Night, a 1961 black-and-white drama depicted a day and night in the life of a disillusioned novelist and his alienated wife, will play in the 100th anniversary year of the birth of its lead actor Marcello Mastroianni.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

De Sica’s 1954 The Gold Of Naples is formed of six episodes inspired by Giovanni Marotta’s short stories, and plays...

As an end-of-year gift to our writers and readers, we've compiled a user-friendly overview of our publishing highlights from 2023. The collection is broken down by category: essays, interviews, festival coverage, and recurring columns.Browse at your leisure, and raise a glass to our brilliant contributors!Meanwhile, you can catch up with all of our end-of-year coverage here.{{notebook_form}}ESSAYSContemporary Cinema:Cinema as Sacrament: The Limitations of Killers of the Flower Moon by Adam PironA Change of Season: Trần Anh Hùng and Frederick Wiseman's Culinary Cinema by Phuong LeWalking, Talking, & Hurting Feelings: Nicole Holofcener's Everyday Dramas by Rafaela BassiliThe Limits of Control: Lines of Power in Todd Field's Tár by Helen CharmanThe Art of Losing: Joanna Hogg's Haunted Houses by Laura StaabTreading Water: Avatar: The Way of Water by Evan Calder WilliamsThe African Accent and the Colonial Ear by Maxine SibihwanaTen Minutes, but a Few Meters Longer:...

Having recently shifted away from their one-film-a-day approach, Mubi has now unveiled their October lineup, which is headlined by Ira Sachs’ stellar drama Passages following its theatrical run this summer. The slate also features handpicked selections by Sachs, with work by Maurice Pialat, Luchino Visconti, Jack Hazan, Shirley Clarke, and Tsai Ming-liang.

Also arriving in October is “Watch If You Dare: Horror Halloween,” a series featuring a trio of giallo classics, with The Fifth Cord, The Possessed, and Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, alongside Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and more. The service will also spotlight the work of underseen Japanese director Yasuzô Masumura, including his aching melodrama Red Angel, his biting workplace satire Giants and Toys, his thrilling noir Black Test Car, and more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

October 1

The Infiltrators, directed by Alex Rivera, Cristina Ibarra | National Hispanic Heritage Month

The Vanished Elephant,...

In the course of the 1960s, much of what was long overdue after the end of World War II took shape in the form of questioning authority, institutions and indeed social norms. Within the culture of several nations, this revolution (if you want to call it that) expressed itself in pieces of art which could no longer be categorized within the traditional patterns, resulting in many artists feeling a kind of uncprecedented freedom. It was only a brief period, but it surely had its consequences, as we can see in the highly influential cinema produced by Art Theatre Guild and its many directors. One of them, Yasuzo Masumura directed over 40 films during his career and was once regarded as one of the most promising talents of this new generation of filmmakers, even though many of his works remain underappreciated (and under-seen) in his home country and beyond its borders, for example,...

“The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” is a joruri play by the Japanese playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The double suicides that occurred on May 22, 1703 inspired Chikamatsu to write this play which made its debut performance on June 20, 1703. Chikamatsu added new scenes in the 1717 revival including the villain's punishment. The reception was rather positive and helped springboard Chikamatsu's future success as a playwright. In the first year alone since the play's premiere, no less than seventeen couples committed double suicide, leading the government to ban it in 1722. The film has been adapted many times on the big screen but Masumura's version is considered the best. For Meiko Kaji, who took the role with no guarantee of payment, this is considered her best performance, netting her awards from Blue Ribbon, Kinema Junpo, Mainichi and Hochi, and a nomination from the Japanese Academy.

on Amazon by clicking on the image below

Tokubei,...

Blind Beast.You could start cradled like the kidnapped woman in the undulating foam curves that resemble a gigantic female torso in Blind Beast (1969). You could make your approach via the swing of a Super-8 camera towards the steps of a courthouse at the beginning of A Wife Confesses (1961). You could drift into A Cheerful Girl (1957) through the kitchen window, onto a table laden with groceries and bottles of fluorescent orange soda-pop. You could inject yourself like morphine into Red Angel (1966), seep like body ink into the skin of Spider Tattoo (1966), or slide into the fevered bloodstream of All Mixed Up (1964) like powdered poison swallowed from a kite-paper pouch. Whether you arrive on the tip of a blade or the cusp of a kiss, there is no wrong place to start with Yasuzo Masumura, the postwar Japanese director whose astonishing accomplishment should by rights have him mentioned in the same...

At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 37 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory.

It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year,...

Bulgarian crime story “Blaga’s Lessons” by Stephan Komandarev scored the top prize and $25,000 at the 57th Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, capping a week of celebrating art film, stars and bold global work.

Calling his film a tribute to his parents’ generation, many of whom have become victims of the rough transition to capitalism, Komandarev accepted his Crystal Globe from actor Robin Wright and fest president Jiri Bartoska.

Wright, on winning the fest president’s prize moments earlier, said festgoers in the Czech spa town have shown a love for experiencing cinemas onscreen, urging them to keep up that passion as streaming platforms erode cinema audiences that have still not fully rebounded from pandemic days. “I thank all of you for supporting cinema. Let’s bring it back – Covid put a bit of downer on that.”

With sold out screenings ranging from Russell Crowe introducing “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World...

Russell Crowe will receive the Crystal Globe Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the 2023 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Kviff organizers announced on Friday. And unlike past recipients of the Crystal Globe like Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Mel Gibson, Judi Dench and Robert De Niro, Crowe will also perform on the festival’s opening night with his rock band, Indoor Garden Party.

The festival, which takes place in a spa town outside Prague in the Czech Republic, will present Crowe with the award on its opening night, June 30. It will also celebrate Crowe’s career with a 20th anniversary screening of Peter Weir’s 2003 epic “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.”

Kviff also announced that Johnny Depp, who was a special guest at the festival two years ago, has starred in the festival’s new trailer, which will premiere on its opening night. Depp,...

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will focus on independent Iranian cinema this year, with a selection of recent works by directors working outside the Tehran regime.

The nine features, all made in the past four years, and most from young directors at the start of their careers, “offer an insightful testimony of the burning creativity of Iran’s artists in the face of their challenging reality,” the festival said in a statement, calling the films examples of “urgent, unheard, voices who palpably bear a spiritual connection to the previous generations of their country’s greats [and who] tackle the current reality [in Iran] with a remarkable sensitivity and great inventiveness.”

The selection includes two features from this year: Negin Ahmadi’s Dream’s Gate and Zapata from director Danesh Eqbashavi; two from 2022: Nader Saeivar’s No End and The Locust, directed by Faeze Azizkhani; Bahram Ark’s The Skin and Vahid Vakilifar’s K9,...

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) has shared details about its forthcoming 57th edition, which runs from June 30 – July 8.

Among the highlights announced today, the festival will host two large-scale retrospective programs. The first, a celebration of independent Iranian cinema, will feature works by nine Iranian filmmakers who the festival said represent “a spiritual connection to the previous generations of their country’s greats, tackle the current reality with a remarkable sensitivity and great inventiveness.”

“Together, these nine unique and intensely personal testimonies form a multi-dimensional mosaic that reflects the collective spirit and openness of Iran’s young cinema of today,” the festival added.”

The selection of films will include The Skin, K9, and Dream’s Gate.

The second retrospective will celebrate the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura, a little-seen but towering figure of Japan’s New Wave. The screening...

Festival will also host a retrospective of the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) will host a retrospective on Iranian cinema as part of its 2023 edition, which will also honour the work of Czech actress Daniela Kolarova.

Under the title ‘Another Birth. Iranian Cinema, Here And Now’, the festival will play nine Iranian films from the past four years. Titles include Vahid Vakilifar’s 2020 sci-fi K9, about the efforts of a group of extremists after a solar eclipse has drenched the earth in darkness; and Farzin Mohammadi’s 2019 Black And White River, about...

The 57th edition of Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, which runs June 30-July 8, has planned a retrospective program focused on Iranian cinema with a selection of films made in the past four years. The festival will also celebrate the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura.

Commenting on the Iranian cinema program, the festival said in a statement: “Collectively these works offer an insightful testimony of the burning creativity of Iran’s artists in face of the challenging reality. Nine mostly young filmmakers – urgent, unheard voices – who palpably bear a spiritual connection to the previous generations of their country’s greats, tackle the current reality with a remarkable sensitivity and great inventiveness.

“Melancholic dramas, comedies, war movies, sci-fis…films about love, and films within films. Together, these nine unique and intensely personal testimonies form a multi-dimensional mosaic that reflect the collective spirit and openness of Iran’s young cinema of today.

Graduating as Ozu’s assistant with his debut feature-length at Shochiku in 1960, Masahiro Shinoda (b. 1931) saw the dawn of the Japanese New Wave and rose to prominence alongside the likes of Nagisa Oshima, Yasuzo Masumura, Koreyoshi Kurahara, and Shohei Imamura among a whole host of others. Though he would spend most of his career reinterpreting and reimagining whole genres including the yakuza film and jidaigeki, the films across his four-decade-long career would predominantly be united by a re-examination of Japanese historical, societal, and national identity, complete with a focus on alienation, mythologies, and religious and moral turmoil. Frequently coupled with composer Toru Takemitsu, cinematographers Masao Kosugi and Tatsuo Suzuki, and actress Shima Iwashita (whom he would go on to marry), Shinoda’s films grapple with man’s perturbing darkness and its effect on the personal and national conscience. Like most of his Nūberu Bāgu compatriots, Shinoda frequently negated cinematic and narrative traditions,...

What’s singular about many of the films of Yasuzo Masumura (1924–1986) is that they’re intellectual forms of exploitation—politically incorrect experiences that are consciously sociopolitical critiques, unlike the roller-coaster rides of Tarantino. You might even say that they shock us into thinking. But it’s hard to make too many generalizations about someone who made 58 films, mostly assignments at Daiei before that studio closed in 1971. (source: https://metrograph.com/the-intellectual-and-sociopolitical-exploitations-of-yasuzo-masumura/)

In our latest column, we will have each contributor pick a specific person and present a list about him. The first selection belongs to Adam Symchuk.

1. Kisses (1957)

Yasuzo Masumura’s first feature-length film, “Kisses” may not be his most defined vision and is a, mostly, straightforward love story. However, the debut stands as an obvious testament of his trajectory in the film industry being one of profound skill. His ability to craft a love story at the forefront...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Anthology Film Archives

One of the great filmmakers, experimental or otherwise, is given a major retrospective—it’s Michael Snow Season.

Spectacle

A muse of Godard and Rivette, Juliet Berto made her directorial debut with the crime film Neige; long unavailable, it’s been restored and screens this Saturday.

Film at Lincoln Center

A series on Danny Glover and Louverture Films features Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives on 35mm, Zama, and more.

IFC Center

As World of Wong Kar-wai keeps going, Death Proof (on 35mm), Showgirls, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., House,...

Yasuzô Masumura’s Blind Beast (1969) will be available on Blu-ray August 24th from Arrow Video

Blind Beast is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japans foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo.

An artists model, Aki (Mako Midori), is abducted, and awakens in a dark warehouse studio whose walls are decorated with outsized womens body parts eyes, lips, legs and breasts and dominated by two recumbent giant statues of male and female nudes. Her kidnapper introduces himself as Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), a blind sculptor whom she had witnessed previously at an exhibition in which she featured intently caressing a statue of her naked torso. Michio announces his intention of using her to sculpt the perfect female form. At first defiant, she eventually succumbs to his intense fixation on her body and finds herself drawn into his sightless world,...

Brilliant filmmaking from Japan: Yasuzô Masumura’s film all but screams in protest, that unfettered consumer capitalism is cannibalism, plain and simple. In the radical director’s scathing, savage satire, Tokyo’s desperate advertising ‘Mad Men’ create a fresh new star celebrity to promote their product, only for the warfare of cutthroat competition to shatter careers, fortunes and basic human values. Masumura’s cinematic onslaught is at least ten years ahead of its time, in design, direction, writing and music — the movie outpaces American comedies about Succeeding in Business, recognizing that the tyranny of commercial media trashes the quality of life itself. Arrow’s informed and insightful Blu-ray extras ask the important question: how can one movie get this complex subject so completely right?

Giants and Toys

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Kyojin to gangu, The Build-Up / Street Date May 11, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Hitomi Nozoe, Yunosuke Ito, Kinzo Shin,...

Yasuzô Masumura’s Giants And Toys (1958) Special Edition will be available on Blu-ray May 11th from Arrow Video

Giants and Toys is a sharp and snappy corporate satire revolving around the ruthless machinations of a group of admen working in the confectionary industry.

As a new recruit to the marketing department of World Caramel, fresh-faced graduate Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) is eager to impress his ambitious and hard-nosed boss Goda (Black Test Car’s Hideo Takamatsu), even if it strains his relationships with his college friend Yokoyama (Koichi Fujiyama) and budding love interest Masami (Michiko Ono), who work at the rival companies of Giant and Apollo. With World’s lead over its competitors slipping badly, the two spot a chance to get back in the race in the shape of the pretty but unsophisticated 18-year-old, Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe). Goda and Nishi get to work polishing this rough diamond as their new campaign girl,...

Yasuzô Masumura’ Black Test Car (1962) is currently available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

Japanese maverick director Yasuzo Masumura (Blind Beast) helms a bitingly satirical espionage thriller set in the heart of the Japanese auto industry in his 1962 landmark Black Test Car, which launched a series of similarly themed Black films.

In a bitter, take-no-prisoners corporate war between the Tiger Motorcar Company and their competitors, the Yamato Company, undercover spies have infiltrated both sides. As Tiger prepares to launch its newest Pioneer car and a prototype bursts into flames, Toru heads a secretive task force to root out Yamato s spy, and find out what they can about the competitor’s familiar-looking new model.

Making its worldwide Blu-ray debut, Black Test Car is paired here with the English-language video premiere of its follow-up The Black Report, also directed by Masumura.

Special Edition Contents

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of Black Test Car...

For vintage Japanese classics Arrow is the place to be this summer. Yasuzô Masumura’s complicated tale of industrial espionage is an attack on the free enterprise system — even good people will do terrible things to get ahead, to prevail over the competition. It’s Tiger Car Company against the Yamato Car Company, winner take all. Plus, the extra feature The Black Report is not filler, but a terrific murder prosecution story, with Masumura’s patented dose of acid cynicism and murky misanthropy.

Black Test Car

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1962 /95 min. / Kuro no tesuto kaa

Starring: Jirô Tamiya, Junko Kanô, Eiji Funakoshi, Hideo Takamatsu, Ichirô Sugai, Kichijiro Ueda.

Written by Kazuro Funabashi, Yoshihiro Ishimatsu from a novel by Sueyuki Kajiyama

Produced by Gentaro Nakajima

The Black Report

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1963 / 94 min. / Kuro no hôkokusho

Starring: Ken Utsui, Junko Kanô, Hideo Takamatsu, Shigeru Kôyama, Eitarô Ozawa, Bontarô Miake, Mieko Kondô.

Written by Yoshihiro Ishimatsu,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Lynch, Hitchcock, Bride of Frankenstein and more come together in “Goth(ic).”

Letter from an Unknown Woman and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg also screen.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Rossellini, Murnau, Warhol, Pialat and more screen as part of “The Non-Actor.”

Film Forum

The Passion of Joan of Arc has its final days

One of Murnau’s greatest films,...

It’s Yasujiro Ozu in light mode, except that his insights into the human social mechanism make this cheerful neighborhood comedy as meaningful as his dramas. Two boys go on a ‘talk strike’ because they want a television set, a choice that has an effect on everyone around them. And what can you say about a movie with running jokes about flatulence . . . and is still a world-class classic?

Good Morning

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 84

1959 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 94 min. / ohayo / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 16, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, Haruko Sugimura, Koji Shitara, Masahiko Shimazu, Isamu Hayashi, Kyoko Izumi, Toyo Takahashi, Sadako Sawamura, Eijiro Tono.

Cinematography: Yushun Atsuta

Film Editor: Yoshiyasu Hamamura

Original Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

Written by Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda

Produced by Shizuo Yamanouchi

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu

Ozu’s Good Morning is a straight-out delight, being both inconsequential and insightful.

It’s lucky 13 — as in 13th annual edition — for Switzerland’s Lausanne Underground Film Festival, an epic celebration of cinematic weirdness, violence, filth and everything else that makes life worth living. The wild debauchery runs October 15-19.

The fest opens on Oct. 15 with the feature film debut by Leah Meyerhoff, I Believe in Unicorns, which tells the story of a troubled teenage girl who runs away with an aggressive older boy.

Other new films include the misanthropic comedy Buzzard by Joel Potrykus; the deep woods psychological thriller Mother Nature by Johan Liedgren; the complex Japanese drama Kept by Maki Mizui; and more.

Luff this year is really stuffed with great retrospectives beginning with a tribute to Beth B, who has been churning out controversial, thought-provoking flicks since the New York No Wave era to know. There will be screenings of her classic films, such as The Offenders and Salvation!, and her latest documentary,...

News.

The lineup for the 52nd Semaine de la Critique as well as the 2013 Selection for Quinzane des Réalisateurs in Cannes have been announced. Also from Cannes: Kim Novak is set to be a guest of honour to mark a screening of the recently restored Vertigo. Above: The omniscient Twitter has revealed the first image behind the scenes of Abel Ferrara's new film featuring Gérard Depardieu as Dominique Strauss-Kahn. David Cronenberg has begun casting his next project, Maps to the Stars. The first names involved? Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon. Two of Mubi's very own are in different (early) stages of realizing film projects. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky has started shooting Ellie Lumme (production pictured above), having partly funded it via GoFundMe. Also head over to Vishnevetsky's blog for updates. Meanwhile, Kurt Walker (co-director of programming for Mubi Canada, Australia & New Zealand) is crowd-funding over at Indiegogo...

Exactly one year ago today, I posted a roundup on the BAMcinématek series The Urge for Survival: Kaneto Shindo and one of the pieces I pointed to was Michael Atkinson's for Moving Image Source: "Shindo, never an exportable star nor an obedient studio soldier, has been a living model of prolificity, penning over 150 films in that period (often enough, a year would see seven films made from Shindo scripts, directed by the likes of Yasuzo Masumura and Kon Ichikawa), and directing 45, a no-nonsense cinema-is-life curriculum that hardly flagged as he went from conscientious postwar Ozu-ite to riled New Waver to contemplative Oliveira-like mandarin. The depth of his footprint on Japanese cinema is difficult to overestimate. If non-Nipponophile filmgoers have known Shindo in the Us, it's by way of Onibaba (1964), the bruising, hypnotic dog-eat-dog brother film to Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (released the same year), and one of the most...

Qaushik Mukherjee’s Gandu (Asshole) will compete at the 17th Athens International Film Festival that opens on Thursday.

The opening film of the festival is Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist.

Around 175 titles will be presented at the festival under 15 sections. The festival will pay tribute to Japanese filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura and Dutch filmmaker Johan van der Keuken. The country in focus will be Norway.

The festival will close on September 25 with Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.

International competition lineup:

Bellflower, dir Evan Glodell (USA)

Silver Tongues, dir Simon Arthur (USA)

Volcano (Eldfjall), dir Runar Runarsson (Iceland)

Asshole (Gandu), dir Qaushik Mukherjee (India)

Familiar Grounds (En terrains connus), dir Stephane Lafleur (Canada)

Natural Selection, dir Robbie Pickering (USA)

Sensation, dir Tom Hall (Ireland)

Submarine, dir Richard Ayoade (UK, Us)

Sidewalls (Medianeras), dir Gustavo Tarreto (Argentina)

Bullhead (Rundscop), dir Michael Roskam (Belgium)

Love, dir William Eubank (USA)

Silver Forest (Silberwald), dir Christine Repond (Switzerland)

On the Ice,...

Reviewing Masahiro Shinoda's Pale Flower is not an easy task for me. I wasn't even aware of the Japanese New Wave movement before watching it, but once I learned it drew from similar inspirations as the French New Wave I wasn't in the least bit surprised considering the one name that never escaped me while watching Pale Flower was Jean-Luc Godard. The comparison, however, was more of a feeling, more of a sense of directorial presence and control and the styles seem to simply match up. I also noticed hints of The Third Man and Sweet Smell of Success in the noir atmosphere, wet stone and dark shadowy corners of the night.

The experimental score by Toru Takemitsu also stands out and as you begin to make your way through the slim, but informative special features even more corners of this world will begin to reveal themselves that you hadn't even noticed before.

Updated through 4/23.

"A movie that has waited nearly 60 years for a Us theatrical premiere and could hardly be more timely, Kaneto Shindo's Children of Hiroshima is a somber melodrama about the aftereffects of atomic radiation, shot on location in the half-rebuilt site of the world's first nuclear catastrophe." J Hoberman in the Voice: "Showing for a week at Bam in advance of an 11-film Shindo retrospective (The Urge for Survival, which includes a feature the 99-year-old director completed this year), Hiroshima is a priori heartrending."

The L's Mark Asch notes that "opening night is now a benefit screening, acknowledging the layers of relevance accrued since the film was programmed. This 1952 atomic-fallout drama, where news-value location footage and statistics-quoting supporting cast coexist with social-issue-movie score and serious voiceover, stars moonfaced Nobuko Otowa, Shindo's wife and a star of all the films in the series save his most recent (she died in...

Take off those big glasses and open your eyes to cinema's most significant spruce-ups

When a makeover is the star of the show, the movie isn't usually up to much. Although the "makeover movie" has given us some classic guilty pleasures in Mean Girls, Clueless, and Pretty Woman, some excellent films like Now, Voyager, and certainly kept Audrey Hepburn busy (Sabrina, Funny Face, My Fair Lady), it's also got a lot to answer for. A lot to answer for.

Generally, makeover movies inspire about as much indifference as Marmite. Though some people love their sense of fun, others find them dull, predictable and sexist. It doesn't help that the makeover is often so laughably superficial, or that the subject is consistently a nice-but-lonely woman obsessed with getting her man.

Though marketed squarely at women, too often the message of the makeover movie is riddled with implicit criticisms of its audience,...

Acquarello

Notes on Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2010

David Cairns

The Forgotten: Trousering the Ghost

The Forgotten: Vessel of Wrath

The Forgotten: Is My Face Red

The Forgotten: Lock-Up

Zach Campbell

Some Kind of Realism: Rossellini's War Trilogy

Andrew Chan

Sinophilic Cinephilia: Asia Society's "China’s Past Present, Future on Film"

Adrian Curry

Movie Poster of the Week: "Cold Weather"

Movie Poster of the Week: "Glory to the Filmmaker" or: Kitano in Posters

Movie Poster of the Week: "Feeder" and the SXSW Poster Award Winners

Movie Poster of the Week: "Everyone Else"

David Hudson

Berlinale. Cons and Ex-Cons

Daniel Kasman

Image of the Day: Unrequited Love #1

The Potential of the Mobile Film Festival: Rotterdam@Bam

Images of the Day: Joan Alone: Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang's "Secret Beyond the Door..."

At the Cinematheque: "The Prowler" (Joseph Losey, 1951)

Jean-Luc Godard's Homage to Eric Rohmer

Now in Theaters: "Shutter Island" (Martin Scorsese,...

• Thursday March 20th:. NYC: Get your Yakuza film fix via Asia Society's Yakuza film series which runs until mid April. Tonite catch Yasuzo Masumura's Hoodlum Soldier. Check here for details & directions.   Friday March 21st:. NYC: IFC Center starts their run of Christophe Honore's Love Songs (Les Chansons d'amour). Ismael (Louis Garrel) has slipped into a comfortable menage a trois with his longtime girlfriend Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and his co-worker Alice (Clotilde Hesme). After a sudden tragedy, these young people must deal not only with the reality of loss but also with the fear that love might never return.  Saturday March 22md:. ...and speaking of three-ways....play catch up with one of these: Van Sant's Paranoid Park, Gordon Green's Snow Angels or Ira Sachs' Married Life. Sunday March 23rd:. NYC: Matchsticks and geometry. Film Forum has a brand new, clean print of Alain Resnais' Last Year at

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