BFI Announce first of their Japanese Films in October and November

BFI Japan have confirmed the first part of it's Japanese line-up for 2021, delayed due to Covid (as with all else!)

From October to December, the BFI will be screening some of Japan's very best movies in cinemas nationwide. Highlights include Akira Kurosawa's epic Seven Samurai (1954); a two-part season at BFI Southbank focusing on the golden age of Japanese studio cinema, alongside the rise of radical New Wave and independent film-makers of the latter 20th century. 

There will also be special event screenings and a film programme on the BFI Player.

from the press release:

Originally scheduled to run in venues across the UK from May to September 2020, the BFI moved the season online by programming an unprecedented number of Japanese films on BFI Player while cinemas across the country remained closed, resulting in films in the BFI Japan collection being streamed on BFI Player in excess of 400,000 times since then. After the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo come to a close this summer, the BFI picks up the torch to shine a light on 100 years of Japanese cinema this autumn, as well as into 2022, when BFI Southbank will programme a two-month season to celebrate the art of anime (April to May 2022), with more details to be announced soon. 

BFI Japan will spotlight one of the world’s greatest cinematic traditions, one that has long inspired admiration and fascination among audiences and creatives the world over. Classic films by Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi regularly rank at the very top of critics’ all-time lists; Studio Ghibli leads the animated world in visionary imagination; while waves of innovators from the cinematic rebels of the 60s to today’s audio-visual live artists and video game auteurs take the moving image to thrilling new places.

The influence of Japanese cinema cannot be overstated – Kurosawa in particular influenced Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – an often shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo (1961) – and Seven Samurai (1954) was adapted into John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960) and influenced films including Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003) and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). George Lucas has long acknowledged Kurosawa’s influence on Star Wars (1977), from the narrative and thematic elements to costumes and names and, more recently, video game Ghost of Tsushima, in which players can adopt ‘Kurosawa mode’, pays loving homage to the master filmmaker.

The full details are available on the BFI Website