Ichikawa Book

[A. M. Nornes]

Here is some information on the Ichikawa book someone was asking about. It's
a very hefty, very good book. I wish I could go to the retrospective!

Markus

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"Kon Ichikawa is one of Japan's greatest directors" - Yukio Mishima

"Indispensable. Expertly researched, packed with information, and
consistently insightful, this anthology draws together over two dozen
articles, including interviews with the director, personal accounts by him
and his collaborators, and, most important, critical essays, some of them
specifically commissioned for this volume. Few anthologies convey such a
palpable sense of a director's work and modus operandi; fewer still attain
such breadth and depth. This anthology will make readers want to rush out
and see the films."

	* Arthur J. Nolletti, Jr., co-editor of Reframing Japanese Cinema:
Authorship, Genre, History (Indiana University Press, 1992).


Kon Ichikawa has long been internationally acknowledged as one of the most
important and prolific masters of Japanese cinema. Celebrated for his many
adaptations of famous Japanese novels, such as Fires on the Plain, Harp of
Burma, Kagi, Conflagration, and The Makioka Sisters, Ichikawa is an artist
with an astounding command of many genres, forms and tones, from ferociously
humanist war films to sophisticated social satires, formalist documentaries
(the acclaimed Tokyo Olympiad) to extravagant period pieces (An Actor's
Revenge). He is both the "deadpan sophisticate" whom Pauline Kael prized,
with his elegant compositional style, venomous wit, and tonal daring, and a
crafty master of populist entertainments.

This volume spans Ichikawa's entire career, with over twenty essays and
commentaries by such leading scholars of Japanese cinema as Donald Richie,
Tadao Sato, Max Tessier, David Desser, Linda C. Ehrlich, and Keiko McDonald.
Excerpts from the prodigious study of the director by film historian Yuki
Mori are augmented by an illuminating article by Ichikawa's wife and
scenarist, Natto Wada, and a selection of the director's own treasurable
essays. A new career interview with Ichikawa conducted by critic Mark
Schilling, and trenchant appraisals by his once assistant director Yasuzo
Masumura, novelist Yukio Mishima, and critic Pauline Kael, round out this
complex portrait of one of the most controversial and accomplished artists
of the Japanese cinema.


464 pages
45 black-&-white stills
6 1/4 x 9 ク
ISBN 0-9682969-3-9

The retrospective includes twenry-six of Ichikawa's films, most of them in
new prints made by The Japan Foundation, and is organized by Cinematheque
Ontario. The tour dates are:

July - Cinematheque Ontario
July / August - Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
July / August - Museum of Fine Art, Boston
September 6 - October 14 - Cin士ath述ue Qu暫残oise, Montreal
September / October - Museum of Modern Art, New York
September 29 - October 31 - Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland
October 26 - December 31 -  National Gallery of Art, Washington; Freer
Gallery
November - December - UCLA Film Archive, Los Angeles
November - December - Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver
November 16 - December 16 - Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
January - February - College of Moving Images, Santa Fe
January / February - The Gene Siskel Film Centre, Chicago
February - Wexner Centre for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio