Our Shôhei
The sixties were a richly creative period for cinema all over the world, and Japan was no exception. It produced its own new wave led by directors such as Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman of the Dunes, 1964), Nagisa Ōshima (Death By Hanging, 1968) and Shôhei Imamura.
Imamura once stated; “I want to make messy, really human, unsettling films.” From the beginning of his career, Imamura noticeably distanced himself from the golden era of Japanese Cinema, including Ozu, who a young Imamura worked for as an assistant on films such as Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952). Imamura separated himself from many other Japanese directors with a focus on the lower classes and social outcasts. He filled his films with poverty-stricken women, prostitutes, pimps and black marketers.
After directing a number of studio pictures for the youth-orientated Nikkatsu Studio, he made Pigs and Battleships (1961), a dazzling film set during the American occupation of Japan. With its wild and rapturous visual style and unbreakable, down-to-earth women, it was a breakthrough for Imamura and showcased for the first time what would become his distinctive style.
Imamura followed up Pigs and Battleships with arguably one of his greatest films. The Insect Woman (1963) further showcased the prototype of the Imamura woman. The film follows Tomé, from the moment of her birth through several lifetimes of despair and destitution, presenting an unrivalled portrait of a woman with an unwavering ability to adapt.
Imamura directed twenty-five films (including TV Movies) in his near forty-five year career. He moved between studies of pornographers, incest, serial killers, the after effects of the Hiroshima bombing and constantly probed at the theme of Civilization versus Primitivism. He was not only a master of the fiction film. After the mammoth production of Profound Desires of the Gods (1968), Imamura left fiction film for ten years. In this period he began an exploration, and ultimately a mastery, of the documentary film. With films like A Man Vanishes (1967) and History of Postwar Japan (1970), he radicalized documentary filmmaking and his influence, although still undervalued, can be traced to the present day.
He is sadly a still too-often unheard of and neglected director. However, the films he has left behind show Shôhei Imamura to be a singular and distinctive voice in the history of cinema.
Pigs and Battleships will be screened by LeftLion and These City Lights Media on Thursday 10 September 2015 at 7:30pm at Screen 22, as a part of Scalarama.The Shôhei Imamura Masterpiece Collection is released as a part of the Masters of Cinema Series on the 19 October 2015.
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