The Japan Society of New York has been showcasing a spate of mindbending "independent films from the Art Theatre Guild of Japan" since February 18. This film series, entitled Shinjuku Ecstasty will conclude tomorrow with Hiroshi Teshigahara's first feature, "Pitfall" (1962) and Koji Wakamatsu's "Ecstasy of the Angels" (1972).
I missed "Funeral Parade of Roses" and this afternoon's screening of Shohei Imamura's "A Man Vanishes" (1967), which is very unfortunate giving how seldom those movies are shown in America, but I did see Nagisa Oshima's "Death By Hanging" (1968) last weekend, which was great. It's just like me to forgo engagements to go see a film that's available on Youtube, but miss gems like "Funeral Parade of Roses" (1969) [which Stanley Kubrick cited as an influence] and "A Man Vanishes" out of sheer laziness. Nonetheless, the opportunity of seeing an Oshima film on the big screen is always a spellbinding experience (the first twenty minutes of "Violence At Noon" (1966) is hypnotic in the precision of its rhythm, framing and editing) and is still rare enough not to miss. The Film Society of Lincoln center programmed a series of the Japanese master's films only a couple of months ago and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago is running a retrospective of most of his work through March 3. God, I'd love to see one of Oshima's color films in 35mm.
To my amazement, I discovered that Nagisa Oshima was the host of a "long-running" Japanese television show "in which he offered advice to women with marital problems." You mean, he made challenging films and saved failing marriages? Wow.
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