Masahiro Shinoda

Co-presented by the Japan Foundation
Programmed by Jesse Trussell

The protean master filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, who passed away last year at 94, deftly leapt between social dramas, samurai films, and stunning engagements with traditional Japanese theater. Beginning his career in the 1950s as an assistant to legends like Yasujirō Ozu (Tokyo Story), his early youth-oriented films (many written by the radical poet, theater-maker, and firebrand Shuji Terayama) established Shinoda as an early master of the Japanese New Wave. By the mid-to-late 60s, his work had become increasingly stylized: the icy wide-screen of Pale Flower and the Noh theater of Double Suicide. Shinoda would go on to amass a career spanning five decades and global acclaim. This series gathers 12 films from across a half-century—many in new restorations and prints imported from Japan—that reveal Shinoda as one of the supreme masters of Japanese cinema.