Donald Richie
Director · 1924 – 2013 · Lima, Ohio, USA
Donald Richie was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films. (Wikipedia)
Movies12
Movie7.5DramaLate in the 1500s, an aging tea master teaches the way of tea to a headstrong Shogun. Through force of will and courageous fighting, Hideyoshi becomes Japan’s most powerful warlord, unifying the country.
Movie7.0DocumentaryDocumentary on film maker Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa
2000 · 4 votes
Movie6.2DocumentaryA profile and history of film director Akira Kurosawa.
Kurosawa: The Last Emperor
1999 · 6 votes
Movie6.8DramaFantasyExperimental short film depicting the life, perhaps real, perhaps a dream, of a young girl named Emi. Emi travels to the city where she encounters her counterpart, Sari, and falls in love with…a vampire?
Movie6.8DocumentaryAn extremely lovely tribute to Ozu, on the 20th anniversary of his death. It uses a combination of footage from vintage films and new material (both interviews and Ozu-related locations) shot by Ozu's long-time camera-man (who came out of retirement to work on this). Surprisingly (or perhaps not), it focuses less on Ozu's accomplishments as a film-maker than on his impact on the lives of the people he worked with..
Movie1.0DocumentaryA documentary on sixties counterculture in Japan featuring Donald Richie, Tadanori Yokoo, Masao Adachi, Koji Wakamatsu, Toshio Matsumoto and Akaji Maro among others.
Under the Skin
2002 · 1 votes
MovieDocumentaryDocumentary about Nagisa Oshima. It includes interviews with Oshima, Donald Richie, Roger Pulvers and Paul Mayersberg
Movie10.0DocumentaryA documentary looking at the samurai traditions and films that helped shape Kurosawa's masterpiece.
Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences
2006 · 1 votes
Movie7.1DocumentaryIn 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie’s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours—a visit to a Frank Sinatra-loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster—and woven together by Richie’s narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner.
The Inland Sea
1991 · 8 votes
Movie6.2DocumentaryA collaborative, newsreel-style portrait of Tokyo in 1957–58, blending photography, animation, and historical imagery to capture the city’s labor, rituals, and nightlife at the moment it became the world’s largest metropolis.
Movie6.0DocumentaryA 2007 documentary examining the collaboration between Teshigahara and novelist Kobo Abe, featuring interviews with film scholars Donald Richie and Tadao Sato, film programmer Richard Peña, set designer Arata Isozaki, producer Noriko Nomura, and screenwriter John Nathan
Teshigahara and Abe
2007 · 2 votes
- Movie7.7Documentary
Using rare archival footage and interviews with noted artists, philosophers, and scholars such as Huston Smith, this film examines the life and teachings of D.T. Suzuki, the celebrated Japanese religious philosopher who first brought Zen Buddhism to the West. This film explores Suzuki's travels in America, his teachings on satori (enlightenment) and other Buddhist concepts, his influence on Western art and psychology, and more.
A Zen Life: D.T. Suzuki
2006 · 3 votes