[KineJapan] Hiroshi Shimizu Retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image and Japan Society in New York (May 4 - June 1)

[Edo Choi]

Hello KineJapan Forum,

Many of you have likely already seen the news, but Alexander Fee and I wanted to share you all details about the Museum of the Moving Image and Japan Society's upcoming retrospective of the films of Hiroshi Shimizu, which will open this coming Saturday, May 4 at the Museum:

An unsung master of Japanese cinema, Hiroshi Shimizu (1903–1966) was highly regarded by contemporaries Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi for his seemingly effortless formal ingenuity, distinguished by his signature linear traveling shots and his naturalistic, open-air depictions of regional Japan. Shot on location and frequently employing non-actors, the loosely plotted, low-key tragicomedies that comprise his most characteristic work foregrounded the transient lives and hardships of everyday people with a marked regard for those pushed to the margins of society, including drifters, migrant workers, war veterans, persons with disabilities, outcast women, and especially children, in whom the director took a personal philanthropic interest and of whom he remarked: “They are natural. They breathe the air. Films must have humans who breathe the air.”

This two-part retrospective offers the first New York survey of the major yet often overlooked filmmaker in more than 30 years and the largest ever assembled in North America.

Presented at the Museum, Part I: The Shochiku Years<https://movingimage.org/series/hiroshi-shimizu/> gathers the best films of Shimizu’s protean and varied career with the studio from his stark, strikingly modernist early melodramas, both silent and sound, through the lyrical tours of provincial life with which he would become chiefly associated. Highlights include the filmmaker’s best-known films in the United States (Japanese Girls at the Harbor, Mr. Thank You, The Masseurs and a Woman, Ornamental Hairpin) alongside rarer contemporaneous works that display the full stylistic and tonal range of this consummate craftsman’s accomplishments, including two of the director’s supreme masterpieces, Children in the Wind (1937) and its two-volume sequel Four Seasons of Children (1939). All films will be presented in 35mm prints imported from collections and archives in Japan.

Part II: The Postwar and Independent Years<https://japansociety.org/film/hiroshi-shimizu-the-postwar-and-independent-years/>, presented at Japan Society, tracks Shimizu’s career after leaving Shochiku, embarking on a new path into self-financed films, independent productions, and contract work at Shintoho and Daiei studios. Shimizu’s postwar filmography encapsulates the everyday tragedies of life, the delicate sentiments of love and loss in the wake of the war, and the pains that befall common people—from the hardships of motherhood to the ostracization of disability. Capturing Japan in a changing of eras, these films illustrate a nation trying to pull itself together, weaving themes of collective struggle and hope while focusing on the lives of the dispossessed. As part of the series, Japan Society has commissioned new English subtitles for five films—some never-before-seen in English-speaking countries.

best,
Edo



Edo Choi
Associate Curator of Film  & First Look Senior Programmer
718 777 6826917 921 0565
36-01 35 Ave,Astoria,
NY11106
movingimage.org
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