Japanese Noir at Cinémathèque

Further to my Bits and Pieces post, here's the Melbourne Cinémathèque about the Japanese Noir season, starting this Wednesday and running over three weeks:

Japanese Noir: Violent Cops & Pistol Operas – Screening at ACMI, May 27-June 10

The Melbourne Cinémathèque is proud to present a season of film noir from some of the most innovative filmmakers in Japanese Cinema.

Commencing May 27, Japanese Noir: Violent Cops & Pistol Operas celebrates one of the most dynamic, raw and socially investigative forms of Japanese genre filmmaking - the crime film. Often focusing on the brutal honor code of the Yakuza, the post-war emergence of youth gangs, the influence of American culture and military occupation and featuring narrative and stylistic abstraction, film noir and the broader crime genre are an important form of post WWII Japanese Cinema.

This season of films produced by the Shochiku studio features works by many of the key directors of Japanese Cinema including: Takeshi Kitano (his incendiary debut feature Violent Cop, 1989), Masaki Kobayashi (the dark but characteristically humanist Black River, 1957), Masahiro Shinoda (Pale Flower, 1964), and Nagisa Oshima (the seminal The Sun’s Burial, 1960). The season concludes with two of the most striking examples of the form: Tai Kato’s I, the Executioner (1968), a legendary exploitation film portraying the disturbing anatomy of a serial killer, and Seijun Suzuki’s Pistol Opera (2001), a hyper-stylized reworking of his controversial classic Branded to Kill (1967).

Screening as follows:

Wednesday May 27

• 7.00pm Violent Cop (1989)
• 8.55pm Pale Flower (1964)

Wednesday June 3

• 7.00pm Black River (1957)
• 9.05 The Sun’s Burial (1960)

Wednesday June 10

• 7.00pm Pistol Opera (2001)
• 9.05pm I, the Executioner (1968)

Check the Melbourne Cinémethèque website for more details