Kochiyama Soshun (河内山宗俊), Flowers Have Fallen (花ちりぬ) & Closing Symposium

Kochiyama Soshun (河内山宗俊), Flowers Have Fallen (花ちりぬ) & Closing Symposium

Saturday, February 11, 2012 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Auditorium, Whitney Humanities Center See map
53 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 6510

河内山宗俊[英語字幕付] 1936 Yamanaka Sadao
Kochiyama Soshun


The title of this film refers to a heroic character from popular stories and the kabuki stage , re-imagined here as a human being with a nuanced personality. Kochiyama is a monk who has broken his vows and runs a tavern in Edo who becomes involved in local intrigue when he tries to protect a pair of orphans from a group of gangsters. The film is notable for realistic performances by actors from the Zenshinza theater troupe at a time when more stylized acting was the norm. The sober atmosphere of the film matches its legacy as one of the only extant films by director Yamanaka Sadao–he died as a young man in World War II, and nearly all of his films were destroyed; this is one of only three that remains.

花ちりぬ[英語字幕付] 1938 Ishida Tamizo
Flowers Have Fallen


Without repeating a shot position or depicting a man on camera, this film set entirely within a Kyoto geisha house explores the lives and relationships of the women who work there, while battles rage in the city streets outside as rebel factions attempt to restore the emperor. Flowers Have Fallen offers us not only an intimate, female-centric perspective on a transitional moment in Japan’s history, but also a glimpse of how such a historical moment was imagined on the eve of another period of social upheaval and war.

Final screening followed with a SYMPOSIUM at 8:00 PM:
Panelists:
David Desser ( Editor, Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema) Fumiaki Itakura (Curator, National Film Center, Tokyo) Daniel Botsman (Chair of Council on East Asian Studies, Professor of History, Yale) Moderator: Aaron Gerow (Professor of Film Studies and East Asian Languages & Literatures, Yale)

The Sword and the Screen: The Japanese Period Film 1915-1960
Rare Samurai Films From the Collection of the National Film Center, Tokyo
A series of rare Japanese samurai films from the collection of the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, which highlights the abundant variety of Japan’s most famous genre. There are social critiques, melodramas, comedies, ghost films and even musicals, directed by some of the masters of Japanese cinema who, in part because they worked in popular cinema, have rarely been presented abroad. The series is the first time Japan’s national film archive has cooperated with a non-Japanese university. All films are in 35mm with English subtitles.

For More Information

Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies and the National Film Center, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Region: 
Japan