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Kindai Eiga Kyōkai
is a Japanese independent film studio. It was formed in 1950 by directors Kōzaburō Yoshimura and Kaneto Shindo and actor Taiji Tonoyama, and went on to produce most of Shindo's films, such as ''The Naked Island'' and ''Onibaba''. History Kindai Eiga Kyōkai was formed in 1950 when Kōzaburō Yoshimura and Kaneto Shindo decided to leave the Shochiku production company. It was formed together with actor Taiji Tonoyama. By 1960, the film company was almost bankrupt. With little money left, Shindo decided to make one last film, ''The Naked Island''. This was a hit abroad, winning a prize at the Moscow Film Festival, and the money earned by signing foreign distribution rights was enough to keep the company afloat. Throughout its history, the company was never highly profitable, with profits being reinvested into making more films. Productions References Bibliography * External links * Kindai Eiga Kyokaiat the Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kōzaburō Yoshimura
was a Japanese film director. Biography Born in Shiga Prefecture, he joined the Shōchiku studio in 1929. He debuted as director in 1934, but continued working as an assistant director for such filmmakers as Yasujirō Ozu and Yasujirō Shimazu after that. It was the 1939 film ''Warm Current'' that established his status as a director. During the Sino-Japanese war he directed a number of military dramas such as '' The Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi'' (1940), for which he toured the actual battlefields in China. His 1947 work '' The Ball at the Anjo House'', starring Setsuko Hara, was named the best picture of the year by ''Kinema Junpo''. This film marked the start of a long relationship with the screenwriter and film director Kaneto Shindō. In 1950, the two of them started the independent production company Kindai Eiga Kyokai. Yoshimura is credited with furthering the careers of such actresses as Fujiko Yamamoto, Machiko Kyō and Ayako Wakao. He directed over 60 films du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kaneto Shindo
was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film producer, and writer, who directed 48 films and wrote scripts for 238. His best known films as a director include ''Children of Hiroshima'', ''The Naked Island'', '' Onibaba'', ''Kuroneko'' and ''A Last Note''. His screenplays were filmed by directors such as Kenji Mizoguchi, Kōzaburō Yoshimura, Kon Ichikawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Seijun Suzuki, and Tadashi Imai. His films of the first decade were often in a social realist vein, repeatedly depicting the fate of women, while since the seventies, portraits of artists became a speciality. Many of his films were autobiographical, beginning with his 1951 directorial debut ''Story of a Beloved Wife'', and, being born in Hiroshima Prefecture, he also made several films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the effect of nuclear weapons. Shindo was one of the pioneers of independent film production in Japan, co-founding his own film company Kindai Eiga Kyōkai with director Yoshimura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiji Tonoyama
was a Japanese character actor who made many appearances in films and on television from 1939 to 1989. He was a close friend of Kaneto Shindo and one of his regular cast members. He was also an essayist. In 1950 he helped form the film company Kindai Eiga Kyokai with Shindo and Kōzaburō Yoshimura. He served in the Japanese military in China in the Second Sino-Japanese War and considered himself to have narrowly escaped from death. He was married but also had a mistress and maintained relationships with both women until the end of his life. He was a keen reader of detective stories and a fan of jazz music. He wrote a series of semi-autobiographical essays under the title , meaning "third rate actor". Kaneto Shindo wrote a biography of Tonoyama called ''Sanmon yakusha no shi'',三文役者の死 meaning "The death of a third-rate actor", which he also filmed as ''By Player is a 2000 Japanese biographical film directed by Kaneto Shindo based on the life of actor Taiji Tonoyama. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shochiku
() is a Japanese film and kabuki production and distribution company. It also produces and distributes anime films, in particular those produced by Bandai Namco Filmworks (which has a long-time partnership—the company released most, if not all, anime films produced by Bandai Namco Filmworks). Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada. It has also produced films by highly regarded independent and "loner" directors such as Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi and Taiwanese New Wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien. Shochiku is one of the four members of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPPAJ), and the oldest of Japan's "Big Four" film studios. History As Shochiku Kinema The company was founded in 1895 as a kabuki production company and later began producing films in 1920. Shochiku is considered the oldest company in Japan involved in present-day film production, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Naked Island
''The Naked Island'' ( ja, text=裸の島, translit=Hadaka no Shima) is a Japanese black-and-white film from 1960, directed by Kaneto Shindō. The film is notable for having almost no spoken dialogue. Plot The film depicts a small family, a husband and wife and two sons, struggling to get by on a tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea on the island of Sukune in Mihara, Hiroshima, over the course of a year. They are the island's only occupants, and survive by farming. They must repeatedly carry the water for their plants and themselves in a row boat from a neighboring island. When the boys catch a large fish, the family travels to Onomichi by ferry, where they sell it to a fishmonger, then eat at a modern restaurant. While the parents are away from the island, the older son falls ill. The desperate father runs to find a doctor to come to treat his son, but when they arrive, the boy is already dead. After the boy's funeral, which is attended by his classmates from his school on the nei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ningen (1962 Film)
is a 1962 Japanese drama film directed by Kaneto Shindo, and starring Taiji Tonoyama, Kei Satō, and Nobuko Otowa, produced by Shindo's company Kindai Eiga Kyokai. Plot A ship loses all means of navigation in a storm. The crew becomes increasingly desperate as food and water run out. The captain, Kamegoro (Taiji Tonoyama), prays to the sailor's god Kompira to rescue them and rations their food and water. His grandson, Sankichi (Kei Yamamoto), follows his grandfather, but the other two crew members, Hachizo (Kei Satō) and Gorosuke ( Nobuko Otowa) rebel and insist on eating their rations of food all at once. In a vision, Kamegoro sees Kompira, who promises to deliver rain. Then the rain comes and the threat of dying of thirst is gone, but there is no food. Each member of the crew revisits pleasant times, which are recreated as flashbacks in the film. Kamegoro also has less pleasant memories of his war service, where he saw another soldier turn to cannibalism. After weeks of hunge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Onibaba (film)
is a 1964 Japanese ''jidaigeki'' film written and directed by Kaneto Shindo. The film is set during a civil war in the fourteenth century. Nobuko Otowa and Jitsuko Yoshimura play two women who kill soldiers to steal their possessions, and Kei Satō plays the man who ultimately comes between them. Plot The film is set somewhere in Japan near Kyoto, in the mid-fourteenth century during a period of civil war. Two fleeing soldiers are ambushed in a large field of tall, thick reeds and murdered by an older woman and her young daughter-in-law. The two women loot the dead soldiers, strip them of their armour and weapons, and drop the bodies in a deep pit hidden in the field. The next day, they take the armor and weapons to a merchant named Ushi and trade them for food. The merchant tells them news of the war, which is driving people across the country to desperation. As they leave, Ushi makes a sexual proposition to the older woman, who rebuffs him. A neighbor named Hachi, who has been ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kuroneko
Galbraith IV, Stuart (1994). ''Japanese Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Films''. McFarland & Company. is a 1968 Japanese horror film directed by Kaneto Shindo, and an adaptation of a supernatural folktale. Set during a civil war in feudal Japan, the film's plot concerns the vengeful spirits, or ''onryō'', of a woman and her daughter-in-law, who died at the hands of a band of samurai. It stars Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, and Kiwako Taichi. ''Kuroneko'' was shot in black-and-white and in TohoScope format, and distributed by Toho. It was not dubbed in English, but was released with subtitles in the United States in 1968. Plot Yone and her daughter-in-law Shige, who live in a house in a bamboo grove, are raped and murdered by a troop of samurai, and their house is burned down. A black cat appears, licking at the bodies. The women return as ghosts with the appearance of fine ladies, who wait at Rajōmon. They find the samurai troop and bring them to an illusory mansion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Will To Live
is a 1999 Japanese comedy drama film directed by Kaneto Shindō starring Rentarō Mikuni and Shinobu Otake. The film won the Golden St. George and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival. Plot Yasukichi visits Mount Kamuriki where, according to the ubasute legend, in the past old people were taken by their children and left to die. Later, he attends a bar run by a woman with whom he had an affair years ago after the death of his wife. He defecates in his clothes and is thrown out by the bar owner. Lying on the pavement, he is run over by a man on a bicycle, who turns out to be a doctor and takes him to the hospital. The doctor rings up Yasukichi's eldest daughter Tokuko, who lives with her father. She is first reluctant to take him home, arguing that she is suffering from bipolar disorder, but eventually gives in. Yasukichi has stolen a book from the hospital about the ubasute custom, and begins reading it to Tokuko. The book's story, about 70-year-old ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
By Player
is a 2000 Japanese biographical film directed by Kaneto Shindo based on the life of actor Taiji Tonoyama. The film is a series of vignettes from Taiji Tonoyama's life and film clips, interspersed with a dialogue to camera by Nobuko Otowa, addressing the camera as if she is addressing Tonoyama himself, recollecting events in his life. The film focuses on Tonoyama's alcohol dependence and his various sexual relationships, as well as his film work with Shindo. Plot The first part of the film shows Tonoyama talking to a waitress, Kimie (Keiko Oginome), in a coffee shop. He then meets her father and asks him for permission to marry Kimie. The father asks him to first divorce his existing wife, Asako (Hideko Yoshida). In fact he is not married to Asako. To prevent him marrying Kimie, Asako then registers them as married. The film moves through various episodes of Tonoyama making films with director Kaneto Shindo. At the time of ''The Naked Island'', Tonoyama is close to death from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Owl (film)
is a 2003 Japanese black comedy film written and directed by Kaneto Shindō. It was entered into the 25th Moscow International Film Festival where Shinobu Otake won the award for Best Actress and Shindō was awarded a special prize for contribution to world cinema. Plot Around 1980, two women, a 37-year-old mother and her 17-year-old daughter, the last occupants of a farming village called "Kibogaoka" for Japanese returnees from Manchuria, are slowly starving to death. As the daughter contemplates eating a lizard, the mother suggests a better way to survive. They telephone a dam construction site and offer themselves as prostitutes. A worker comes to visit them and has sex with the mother. Afterwards, the women allegedly offer him Shōchū, but the liquid was actually made from a highly poisonous plant. This causes him to foam at the mouth, emit animal noises, and then die. They cart his body off and celebrate getting his money. With the money, the women are able to get food t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postcard (2010 Film)
is a 2010 Japanese drama film written and directed by Kaneto Shindō. It was Shindō's last film before his death in 2012 at age 100. The film is set during and after the Pacific War and deals with the effect of the death of soldiers on their families. It is loosely based on Shindō's wartime experiences. Plot Near the end of the Pacific War, Sadazo Morikawa is one of a group of 100 overaged conscripts for the Japanese navy assigned to cleaning duty. Once the cleaning duty has finished, the members are chosen by lottery for various duties. Sadazo is assigned to serve in the Philippines. He thinks he will not survive, and asks a comrade, Matsuyama, to return a postcard to his wife, Tomoko, and tell her that he received it before he died. Earlier, Sadazo is conscripted, and he says goodbye to his parents Yukichi and Chiyo and wife Tomoko. Later, a military official reports Sadazo's death. Sadazo's parents plead with Tomoko not to leave, and to marry their younger son Sanpei. Tomo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
