alr

Osaka Elegy
(Naniwa Ereji)

Screening on Film
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
With Isuzu Yamada, Seiichi Takegawa, Chiyoko Okura.
Japan, 1936, 35mm, black & white, 90 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

Mizoguchi’s first collaboration with screenwriter Yoshitaka Yoda was a harshly realist critique of Thirties’ Japan as a soullessly capitalist society where human and mercantile values are savagely equated, and everything is ultimately reduced to a form of moneyed transaction. Mizoguchi would later claim his own despised father to be the inspiration for the miserly old man whose selfishness causes the ruination of his family and the degradation of his daughters. Mizoguchi and Yoda’s devastating indictment of Japanese patriarchy remained controversial and, in fact, was banned in 1940 by the Japanese military government.

Part of film series

Read more

The Tales and Tragedies of Kenji Mizoguchi

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Melville et Cie.

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf