Category: Japanese
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At a 4K Restoration at the SBIFF Riviera Theater, Masayuki Suo’s tale of a businessman learning ballroom dancing is as timeless as ever. In one pivotal scene from Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? (1996), successful Japanese businessman Shohei Sugiyama dances alone underneath a bridge, while the private investigators his wife hired to follow him look…
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Grave of the Fireflies (1988) defines itself as a relentlessly grim film from start to end. The opening scene sees siblings Seita and Setsuko run frantically through Kobe as it is firebombed, and while they make it out alive, they are nevertheless terrified. When Seita learns that their mother died during the attack, he and…
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Akira Kurosawa pulls off a perfect Japanese adaptation of Shakespeare in this beautiful classic. Hunters stand on rolling hills in the Japanese countryside. One finds three boars in the distance. They mount. They pursue. And soon, all three are dead. The main conflict in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is not political, or even dynastical. It is,…
BEYOND THE FRAME 