American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre Presents
In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of A Japanese Master
In collaboration with
LACMACo-sponsored by the Japan Foundation
April 23 – 26 at the Egyptian Theatre
Trailblazing Nagisa Oshima was one of the fathers of the Japanese Nouvelle Vague in the early 1960s, and his work still has the capacity to shock, provoke thoughtful reflection and entertain. Oshima's works exhibit such wit, beauty and furious invention, never mind profound feeling, that their conceptual gambits take on sensual and emotional force. They are less the product of a postmodernist sensibility, as some critics have characterized Oshima's strategies, than of a desperate intelligence. Oshima made films as if they were a matter of life and death. Though born into privilege, the son of a government worker in Kyoto (reportedly of samurai ancestry), Oshima was a nascent socialist whose ideals were formed in his youth by the general strike of 1947; the Pacific War, Emperor Hirohito's capitulation after the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent American occupation of Japan; the mass student struggle against the Korean War and, most markedly, against AMPO, Japan's security pact with Cold War America. Steeped in Marxist and Freudian thought from his father's prodigious library, Oshima opposed using ideological systems to probe his nation's psyche: "I am not a Marxist," he insisted. "In fact, I find Marxism and Christianity to be the same thing and both of them are bad."
American Cinematheque will be screening various startlingly provocative films directed by Oshima including IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, EMPIRE OF PASSION, CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH, VIOLENCE AT NOON, PLEASURES OF THE FLESH, DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF and more. His movies are for mature audiences, and films like IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES will be restricted with no one under 18 admitted. Many of the films will be screened in new 35mm prints! All films in Japanese with English subtitles. This retrospective continues at LACMA's Bing Theater in May with a different selection of Oshima masterworks.
For more information and the full schedule, click
here.
