Sessue Hayakawa retrospective at MoMA

[Daisuke Miyao]

Dear KineJapan members:

I hope you are having a nice summer.

I am very pleased to announce you that there will be a film series, “Sessue Hayakawa: East and West, When the Twain Met,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from September 5–16.

This is the first extensive retrospective of Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973), Japanese actor and very popular movie star in the period of silent cinema.  Most of the surviving prints of his silent films in the American film archives, including Hayakawa’s debut film O Mimi San (1914), Thomas H. Ince’s The Wrath of the Gods (1914), spectacular film with scenes of a volcano eruption, and Cecil B. DeMille’s controversial race melodrama The Cheat (1915), will be screened in the series.  This is a rare opportunity to witness Hayakawa’s acting with “great intelligence and subtlety.”  The Devils’ Claim (1920), the film produced at Hayakawa’s own production company, which has recently become available and I myself has not seen yet, is also included in the series. 

If you happen to be in the NY Metropolitan area, please come and join us! 
The schedule for all the screenings is available at the MoMA website:

http://moma.org/exhibitions/film_exhibitions.php?id=5824&ref=calendar

Daisuke Miyao
Assistant Professor in Japanese Film
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Oregon