Also playing at BAM/Pacific:
The Ceremony
Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1971)
In Memoriam
Nagisa Oshima, March 31, 1932–January 15, 2013
(Gishiki). A chronicle of the Sakurada family beginning in 1946, The Ceremony takes as its subject nothing less than the history of the postwar Japanese state. From the family patriarch, a high-ranking government official before and during the war, to grandson Masuo, the central character of the film and a spiritual alter ego for Oshima, the entire family seems charged by incestuous proclivities and moral ambiguity resulting from the war. All the key action takes place during ceremonies—funerals, weddings, Buddhist services—when the strength of family tradition, and the spiritual authority of the state, are most obvious. Amid strikingly beautiful set pieces, the ceremonies grow more bizarre, and what starts out looking like one of those formal family sagas the Japanese love so well snowballs into the horror and violence of the ripest Jacobean dramas: a vertiginous indictment of the madness of contemporary Japan.
• Written by Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Oshima. Photographed by Toichiro Narushima. With Kenzo Kawarazaki, Atsuko Kaku, Kei Sato, Nobuko Otowa. (122 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, ’Scope, 35mm, From The Japan Foundation, permission Janus/Criterion Collection)
The Art Theater Guild program looks pretty good. Wonder if Criterion has plans for any of the other titles?
Art Theater Guild:
Silence Has No Wings
(Tobenai chinmoku). Kazuo Kuroki (Japan, 1966).
Ecstasy of the Angels
(Tenshi no kōkotsu). Koji Wakamatsu (Japan, 1972).
She and He
(Kanojo to kare). Susumu Hani (Japan, 1963).
Children Who Draw
(E o kaku kodomotachi). Susumu Hani (Japan, 1956).
The Inferno of First Love
(Hatsukoi jigokuhen). Susumu Hani (Japan, 1968).
Pastoral: Hide and Seek
(Den’en ni shisu). Shuji Terayama (Japan, 1974).
Human Bullet
(Nikudan). Kihachi Okamoto (Japan, 1968).
Shura
Toshio Matsumoto (Japan, 1971).
A Man Vanishes
(Ningen jōhatsu). Shohei Imamura (Japan, 1967).