Akira Kurosawa
Director · 1910 – 1998 · Shinagawa, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明) was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (1943). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. Rashomon (1950), which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961) and High and Low (1963). After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive great acclaim. In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named Asian of the Century in the Arts, Literature, and Culture category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media.
Movies11
Movie5.8DocumentaryEleven major film makers from Europe, America and Asia talk about Akira Kurosawa and discover surprising influences on their own work.
Movie7.1DocumentaryBesieged by cancer and nearing the end, the genius Argentine-Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco (1946-2016) asks Bárbara Paz, his wife, for one last wish: to be the protagonist of his own death.
Movie2.0DocumentaryWe thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.
Morceaux de Cannes
2021 · 1 votes
Movie7.0DocumentaryDocumentary on film maker Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa
2000 · 4 votes
Movie6.4DocumentaryUsing the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.
What Is Cinema?
2013 · 25 votes
Movie6.3DocumentaryAn intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.
A. K.
1985 · 40 votes
Movie6.2DocumentaryA profile and history of film director Akira Kurosawa.
Kurosawa: The Last Emperor
1999 · 6 votes
Movie8.0DocumentaryThis 150-minute documentary, directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi on the set of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, features behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew.
Movie10.0DocumentaryDocumentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "Seven Samurai" (1954).
Movie7.7DocumentaryTV MovieNagisa Oshima interviews Akira Kurosawa, leading him to share his thoughts about filmmaking, his life and works, and numerous anecdotes relating to his films and his various film activities.
Movie8.0DocumentaryDocumentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "The Hidden Fortress" (1958).
Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create: 'The Hidden Fortress'
黒澤明～創ると云う事は素晴らしい～隠し砦の三悪人
2002 · 1 votes
Series1
TV9.5Talk ShowMarcello Mastroianni, Isabelle Adjani, Alain Delon, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen... the biggest stars in cinema were welcomed by Christian Defaye on his show Spécial cinéma. Between intimate confessions from actors and immersion in the world of the greatest filmmakers, Christian Defaye took viewers on a journey into the fascinating world of cinema for nearly thirty years.
Spécial cinéma
1974 · 2 votes