Obit: Imamura Shohei

[Alastair Phillips]

And from The Guardian this morning (UK time):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1787043,00.html

Best,

Alastair


On 1/6/06 2:12 pm, "Markus Nornes" <amnornes at umich.edu> wrote:

> From the NYT:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/movies/31imamura.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=11491
> 67438-hLyO+wEYavwSzCVgiEtbFA
> 
> 
> May 31, 2006
> 
> 
> Shohei Imamura, 79, Japanese Filmmaker, Is Dead
> 
> By DAVE KEHR 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/dave_kehr/index.
> html?inline=nyt-per>
> Shohei Imamura 
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=95413&inline=nyt-
> per> , one of the most significant filmmakers of Japan's postwar generation,
> whose works include "Black Rain"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=133366;5925&inl
> ine=nyt_ttl>  and two top-prize winners at Cannes, died yesterday in Tokyo. He
> was 79.
> 
> The cause was liver cancer, his son Hirosuke told The Mainichi Daily News..
> 
> Born into an upper-middle-class family in Tokyo in 1926, Mr. Imamura was often
> grouped with Nagisa Oshima
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=105229&inline=nyt
> -per> , Seijun Suzuki
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=119458&inline=nyt
> -per>  and Masahiro Shinoda as a founder of the Japanese New Wave, which
> emerged in the late 1950's and early 60's to shake tradition-bound Japanese
> cinema.
> 
> Mr. Imamura met Mr. Oshima and Mr. Shinoda when all three were enrolled in the
> assistant directors program at Shochiku studios. Mr. Imamura was first
> assigned to Yasujiro Ozu
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=105319&inline=nyt
> -per> , whom he assisted on three films, including the classic "Tokyo Story"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=50260&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1953). But Mr. Imamura rejected the careful compositions and noble,
> self-sacrificing characters of Ozu's films, preferring to show the chaotic
> reality of postwar Japan.
> 
> He found a more congenial mentor in the director Yuzo Kawashima, whose taste
> for stories of the working class had already made him an outsider at the
> aristocratic Shochiku. Soon, both men moved to Shochiku's less conservative
> rival, Nikkatsu studios, where Mr. Imamura quickly rose through the ranks,
> first becoming a screenwriter for Kawashima, then a director in his own right.
> 
> Mr. Imamura's first four films ? "Stolen Desire,"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=179891&inline=nyt_ttl>
> "Nishi Ginza Station,"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=150752&inline=nyt_ttl>
> "Endless Desire" 
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=179892&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (all 1958) and "My Second Brother"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=179893&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1959) ? were studio assignments. He considered his first personal film to be
> "Pigs and Battleships"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=152206&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1961), a scathing burlesque set in a Japanese port town dominated by American
> forces and based in part on his own experiences as a black marketeer.
> 
> The film contains most of the seeds of Mr. Imamura's mature work: the
> black-and-white widescreen frames throb with an animalistic vitality, and his
> protagonists are unabashedly amoral and self-centered, concerned only with
> personal survival. For Mr. Imamura, these were the positive traits of an
> island nation of limited resources. "The Insect Woman"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=24911&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1963) follows Tome (Sachiko Hidari) from childhood through a successful
> career as a prostitute and madam. "The Pornographers"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=38743&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1966), subtitled "An Introduction to Anthropology," satirizes tight Japanese
> families: an impotent maker of stag movies lusts after his teenage
> stepdaughter.
> 
> With "The Profound Desire of the Gods"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=97981&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1968) Mr. Imamura turned a tiny island populated by an incestuous family into
> a corrosive metaphor for Japanese isolationism. An expensive film, it proved
> to be a box office failure, and for the next several years, he concentrated on
> a film school he had founded, and on documentaries, still following his
> favorite themes. This period produced "The History of Postwar Japan as Told by
> a Bar Hostess" (1970) and "The Making of a Prostitute"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=179895&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1975).
> 
> He returned to fiction filmmaking in 1979 with "Vengeance Is Mine,"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=270752;145657;1
> 34958;52280;52279;115478;115479&inline=nyt_ttl>  one of the first films to
> take a serial killer as a hero. "Eijanaika"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=15406&inline=nyt_ttl>
> ("Why Not?," 1981) remains an epic vision of Japan in the 1860's, as the
> country reluctantly opened to the West.
> 
> After "Eijanaika," Mr. Imamura seemed to cool down and scale back his films.
> "The Ballad of Narayama"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=3805;123857&inl
> ine=nyt_ttl>  (1983), a remake of a famous 1958 heart-tugger, approached
> academicism with its classical compositions and attention to period detail:
> Mr. Imamura was rewarded at Cannes with his first Palme d'Or, the top award.
> He received the Japanese equivalent of the Oscar, the Kinema Junpo Award, for
> "Black Rain" (1989), a somber study of Hiroshima.
> 
> With his final three features, Mr. Imamura regained his subversive sense of
> humor, and his sometimes clinical detachment from his characters turned to a
> warm, if amused, affection. "The Eel"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=154965&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1997, the winner of his second Palme d'Or), "Dr. Akagi"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=162480&inline=nyt_ttl>
> (1998) and "Warm Water Under a Red Bridge" (2001) were relatively calm and
> contemplative.
> 
> But Mr. Imamura also found time during this period to sponsor the work of
> Takashi Miike 
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=235203&inline=nyt
> -per> , whose notoriously violent, overtly sadistic films took Mr. Imamura's
> assumptions about humanity to new extremes. Mr. Imamura's last work was a
> short contribution to "September 11,"
> <http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=272714&inline=nyt_ttl>
> an anthology film about the worldwide effects of the attacks.
> 
> The director is survived by his wife, a daughter and two sons, one of whom,
> under the name Daisuke Tengan, collaborated on the screenplays for his
> father's last three features.
> 


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