SUMMER 2006
A MAN, A BLADE, AN EMPTY ROAD: SUMMER OF SAMURAI
JUNE 16-JULY 6
A MAN, A BLADE, AN EMPTY ROAD brings you two 1960s masterworks by Masaki Kobayashi, enthralling sword-swinging efforts by major talents Hideo Gosha, Hiroshi Inagaki and Kihachi Okamoto, three vintage movies from the hugely popular ZATOICHI THE BLIND SWORDSMAN series and two from the master himself, the great Akira Kurosawa. With such wonderful work emerging from the samurai genre, it deserves to be appreciated as part of a cross-cultural give and
take a global conversation that incldues German expressionism, Nouvelle Vague innovation and the American Western. It's a genre that, at its best, combines ferocious excitement with astonishing visual beauty, grace, rowdy humor, pathos and even tragedy. A MAN, A BLADE, AN EMPTY ROAD is nothing shot of a tale of a great moment in cinema history.
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Attend all the films in A MAN, A BLADE, AN EMPTY ROAD: SUMMER OF SAMURAI with the Series Pass: $50/$35 NWFF members.
JUNE 16-18 Fri-Sun at 7, 9:30pm (plus Sat, Sun at 4:30pm)
NEW 35MM PRINT!
SAMURAI REBELLION
(Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 1967, 35mm, 121 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Social critic Masaki Kobayashi (HUMAN CONDITION) makes a devastating attack on feudalism. A lord forces Isaburos (Toshiro Mifune) son to marry his discarded mistress, Ichi (Yoko Tsukasa). But then he demands her return. The tension explodes in Isaburo's powerful rebellion. Winner of Japan's Oscar equivalent for Best Film, Kobayashis film is a gripping story of a peaceful man who finally decides to take a stand against injustice.
�SAMURAI REBELLION is as extreme a samurai fi lm as I've seen in both senses (the ethics and the violence), and one of the best." Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
JUNE 19 Mon at 7, 9pm
Zatoichi Mondays!
NEW TALE OF ZATOICHI
(Tokuzo Tanaka, Japan, 1963, 35mm, 91 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
To start off our Zatoichi Mondays we begin with the first color film in the series. Zatoichi, the blind masseur and swordsman, has a chance meeting with swordsman Yajuro Banno, his former master. Delighted to see his former pupil, Banno invites him to visit the home he shares with his sister, Yayoi. Much to Banno's chagrin, she quickly falls in love with the kind and gentle Ichi. Things turn out to be not what they seem as Banno is discovered to be involved in a kidnapping and extortion plot. Torn between love and justice, will Ichi's plans of marriage succeed or must he risk all to challenge his old friend and teacher to a duel to the death?
JUNE 20-22 Tues & Thurs at 7pm, Wed. at 9:30pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI
(Hideo Gosha, Japan, 1964, 35mm, 95 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Director Hideo Gosha�s first feature film is not only one of the most assured directorial debuts ever, it is also something of a holy grail for samurai movie aficionados, as it has been notoriously hard to see outside of Japan since its initial release. Wandering samurai Tetsuro Tanba is swayed into helping those who can't fend for themselves, in this case starving farmers who have kidnapped a local lord's daughter in protest over unfair taxes. In the process, much blood is shed, and two other swords-for-hire become reluctant draftees into Tanba's band of rebels. Gosha�s use of the black-and-white Cinemascope frame is astonishing, with a down-to-earth, hardboiled ambience rarely seen in early 1960s samurai pictures.
JUNE 20-22 Tues & Thurs at 9pm, Wed at 7pm
THRONE OF BLOOD
(Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1957, 35mm, 110min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Director Akira Kurosawa's savage, free-fl owing adaptation of William Shakespeare's MACBETH plunges viewers into an eerie, fog-shrouded world of madness and obsession set in medieval Japan during a period of feudal confl ict. Toshiro Mifune stars as the proud warrior who is destroyed by his wife's murderous greed and his own all-consuming desire for power. From frenzied battle sequences to a brutal climax in which an entire forest seems to move against Mifune, Kurosawa's masterwork combines the stylization of Noh theatre with the dynamic energy of an American Western.
�Unforgettable and passionate; just like Shakespeare ought to be." -Jeffrey M. Anderson, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
JUNE 23-25 Fri- Sun at 7, 9:30pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
KILL!
(Kihachi Okamoto, Japan, 1968, 35mm, 114 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
In this pitch-black action comedy by director Kihachi Okamoto, a pair of down-on their-luck swordsmen (Tatsuya Nakadai, Etsushi Takahashi) come to a dusty, windblown town and get involved in a local clan dispute. Both amusing and violent, Okamoto's skillful combination pits corrupt officials against idealistic retainers. Based on the same source novel as Akira Kurosawa's SANJURO, KILL! playfully tweaks samurai film conventions, borrowing from established chambara classics and throwing in a little Spaghetti Western.
JUNE 26 Mon at 7, 9pm
Zatoichi Mondays!
ZATOICHI THE FUGITIVE
(Tokuzo Tanaka, Japan, 1963, 35mm, 86 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Zatoichi seeks bloody vengeance on a powerful ronin and his ruthless gang. Arriving in the village of Shimonida, Ichi learns that a local gang has placed a bounty on his head. A powerful hired ronin attacks Ichi and nearly claims his life, but only when the assassin slays a defenseless woman can Ichi no longer control his rage. After laying waste to the entire gang, Ichi's final duel becomes a deadly meeting of the samurai's superior swordsmanship and the blind masseur's unbridled rage.
JUNE 27-29 Tues-Thurs at 6:30pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
THE SWORD OF DOOM
(Kihachi Okamoto, Japan, 1966, 35mm, 119 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Tatsuya Nakadai stars in the story of a wandering samurai who exists in a maelstrom of violence. A gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) kills without remorse, without mercy. It is a way of life that ultimately leads to madness, culminating in a climatic sequence of carnage in a house filled with assassins. Toshiro Mifune co-stars as the head of a fencing school.
�A brooding, powerful performance by Tatsuya Nakadai as a bloodthirsty master bladesman gives SWORD OF DOOM a cutting edge.� �Howard Thompson, NEW YORK TIMES
JUNE 27-29 Tues-Thurs at 9pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
BANDITS VS. SAMURAI SQUADRON
(Hideo Gosha, Japan, 1978, 35mm, 163 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
This big-budget grafting of STING-style chicanery onto the samurai tradition makes BANDITS VS. SAMURAI SQUADRON probably the top samurai film of the 70s. Enigmatic bandit chieftain Kumokiri Nakaemon (Tatsuya Nakadai) uses con games and robberies to finance a revenge plot; Shogunate policeman Shikubu Abe (Somegoro Ichikawa) calls on double-crosses of his own to stop him.
JUNE 30-JULY 2 Fri-Sun at 7, 9:30pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
HARAKIRI
(Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 1963, 35mm, 121 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Following the collapse of his clan, unemployed samurai Hanshiro Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to commit ritual suicide on his property. Iyi�s clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for charity, try to force him to eviscerate himself but they have underestimated his honor and his past. Winner of the 1963 Cannes Film Festival's Special Jury Prize, director Masaki Kobayashi's film is a scathing denouncement of feudal authority and hypocrisy.
JULY 3 Mon at 7, 9pm
Zatoichi Mondays!
ZATOICHI ON THE ROAD
(Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Japan, 1963, 35mm, 85min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
Here we find the blind swordsman and his companion on their way to meet with a local gang leader who wants to hire Zatoichi as his bodyguard. A rival gang attacks them before they can reach their destination, but the clever swordsman and masseur negotiates safe passage. Things take a dramatic turn when he meets a servant girl fleeing the feudal lord who raped her. Zatoichi bravely agrees to help her get back to her family, knowing he will have to take on both gangs in order to succeed.
JULY 5-6 Wed-Thurs at 7pm
NEW 35MM PRINT WITH ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE!
SEVEN SAMURAI
(Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1954, 35mm, 206 min.)
Sponsored by East Asia Center and Scarecrow Video
What better way to close out the series than with the film that defined the samurai genre? In 16th-century Japan, seven unemployed swordsman are hired to defend a village against forty marauding bandits. One of international cinema's undisputed masterworks, SEVEN SAMURAI has influenced scores of films - from the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone to the STAR WARS cycle - and was remade as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.
"�Moves like hot mercury, and it draws a viewer so thoroughly into its world that real life can seem thick and dull when the lights come up." -Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE