The past few years has seen a steady revival of interest in classic Japanese cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, with a stream of retrospectives and the issues of DVD packages devoted to the works of such films masters as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenzi Mizoguchi and Shohei Imamura. The latest Japanese director to get the revival treatment is Nagisa Oshima, widely considered a major force in world cinema for his provocative films of the 1960s and 1970s. A national tour of Oshima’s work has opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, with a 14 film series of the director’s most stylized works. 

Best known for the international arthouse sex sensation IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, Oshima actually worked in a prolific range of styles and moods. The series begins with THE SUN’S BURIAL, a 1960 melodrama of wayward youth that shows the underlying current of post-war malaise among Japan’s young generation. CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (1961) also involves the restlessness and detachment of the generation that came of age after the disastrous folly of World War II. Two rare films also screening in the series are DEATH BY HANGING and PLEASURES OF THE FLESH, both satires of the legal bureaucracy and consumer hedonism of a Japan that was emerging as a major financial player on the world stage. The series continues through 14 April. Find out more about it on the website: www.bam.org

Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor