Throughout his remarkably prolific, long and fascinating career, Kaneto Shindo (b. 1912) has remained at the center of major trends and turns in Japanese cinema. A sought-after art director and apprentice to Kenji Mizoguchi in the 1930s, Shindo made a name for himself in the 1940s as a prolific and popular screenwriter before working as assistant director to such iconic filmmakers as Kon Ichikawa and New Wave titans Seijun Suzuki and Yazuo Matsumoro. In 1950 Shindo formed one of Japan’s first independent production companies with actress Nobuko Otowa – who would later star in several of Shindo’s key films – and began to direct politically outspoken features with a distinct class-consciousness, focused principally upon the struggle of the lower and working classes – an interest which would culminate in his extraordinary study of a rural 20th century peasantry The Naked Island, considered by many to be Shindo’s masterpiece. Shindo’s breakthough came earlier, however, with his controversial Children of Hiroshima, the first and among the most powerful Japanese narrative films to depict the atomic bombing of Shindo’s hometown and its aftermath. Shindo’s notable embrace of period ghost stories resulted in two important and influential films, Onibaba and Kuroneko, which maintained the critical Marxist stance of his early work and inspired a new interest in folk-tales and the “primitive” as a major theme. Like his contemporary Shohei Imamura, Shindo turned to the lower depths of Japanese culture and history to question the traditional perception – in Japan and abroad – of “Japanese-ness” and to discover within it a dark vein of raw, anarchic energy. At a spry 98 years old, Shindo remains active to this day with his latest film, the powerful anti-war drama Postcard, marking a return to the subject of Hiroshima’s complex and troubling legacy. – Haden Guest