ACTION & ANARCHY: THE FILMS OF SEIJUN SUZUKI
“Seijun Suzuki is a master stylist and one of Japanese cinema’s greatest innovators. His work has been a great inspiration to me. A retrospective of his films – fantastic!” – Jim Jarmusch
“To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess.”— Manohla Dargis, NY TIMES
All shows are regular admission.
CARMEN FROM KAWACHI Wednesday, January 13 at 7:30 pm
A 1960s riff on the opera Carmen (including a rock version of its famous aria "Habanera"), this picaresque tale sends its heroine from the countryside to Osaka and Tokyo in search of success as a singer. Her journey is fraught with exploitation and abuse at the hands of nefarious men—until Carmen seeks revenge. Mixing comedy, biting social commentary, and Suzuki’s customarily outrageous stylistic flourishes, this fast-paced gem is an overlooked classic from his creative late period at Nikkatsu Studios. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation. (Japan, 1966, 35mm, 89 min., Japanese with English subtitles)
Seijun Suzuki first became famous when he was fired by Nikkatsu Studios for making films that, as he put it, “made no sense and made no money.” But it was his freewheeling approach and audacious experimentation that gained Suzuki a cult following in Japan and abroad. Suzuki’s job at Nikkatsu was to make B movies out of scripts that were assigned to him. In the mid-1960s, Suzuki’s restlessness began to come through as he began experimenting with the assigned material. These films established Suzuki as a stylistic innovator working within—and rebelling against—the commercial constraints of studio work. In the 1990s, a new generation of devotees, most notably Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, praised Suzuki in the press and referenced his work in their films. Co-presented with the Japan Foundation.