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The Samurai Vagabonds
(Akunin shigan)

Screening on Film
Directed by Tsutomu Tamura.
With Kayoko Hono, Fumio Watanabe, Masahiko Tsugawa.
Japan, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 83 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: National Film Archive of Japan

Virtually unknown outside of (and even within) Japan, this Shochiku New Wave gem is set in a mining bunkhouse wherein a woman who survives a double suicide becomes entwined in a peculiar relationship with her dead lover's brother, a killer on the run. Another significant yet overlooked progenitor of the New Wave's theoretical and formal ideals, Tsutomu Tamura only made this one film as a director before leaving Shochiku to create an independent production company with Nagisa Oshima and write scripts for many of the renowned director's films, including The Catch (1961), Violence at Noon (1966) and Boy (1969). 

Part of film series

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The Other New Wave.
Alternate Histories of Post WWII Japanese Cinema

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