Art Theatre Guild (ATG) was a film production company in Japan that started in 1961 and ran through to the mid-1980s, releasing mostly

Japanese New Wave The is a group of loosely-connected Japanese filmmakers during the late 1950s and into the 1970s. Although they did not make up a coherent movement, these artists shared a rejection of traditions and conventions of classical Japanese cinema in ...

and

arthouse An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily ...

films.

History

ATG began as an independent agency which distributed foreign films in Japan. With the decline of the major Japanese film studios in the 1960s, an "art house" cinema group formed around ATG and the company moved into distributing Japanese works rejected by the major studios. By 1967 ATG was assisting with production costs for a number of new Japanese films. Some of the early films released by ATG include

Shōhei Imamura was a Japanese film director. His main interest as a filmmaker lay in the depiction of the lower strata of Japanese society. A key figure in the Japanese New Wave, who continued working into the 21st century, Imamura is the only director from J ...

's ''

A Man Vanishes is a 1967 Japanese pseudo documentary film by director Shōhei Imamura about a film team's search for a man reported missing. Plot Tadashi Oshima, a 32-year-old salesman from Naoetsu, Niigata prefecture, is reported missing. Together with Oshima ...

'' (1967),

Nagisa Oshima NaGISA (Natural Geography in Shore Areas or Natural Geography of In-Shore Areas) is an international collaborative effort aimed at inventorying, cataloguing, and monitoring biodiversity of the in-shore area. So named for the Japanese word "nagisa ...

's ''

Diary Of A Shinjuku Thief is a 1969 Japanese New Wave film directed by Nagisa Ōshima. Synopsis The film centers around Birdie, a young Japanese book thief who is caught by a store clerk named Umeko. As their encounters grow increasingly fraught with tension and desire ...

'' (1968) and ''

Death by Hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging ...

'' (1968),

Toshio Matsumoto (25 March 1932 – 12 April 2017) was a Japanese film director and video artist. Biography Matsumoto was born in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan and graduated from Tokyo University in 1955. His first short was '' Ginrin'', which he made in 1 ...

's masterpiece ''

Funeral Parade of Roses is a 1969 Japanese drama art film directed and written by Toshio Matsumoto, loosely adapted from '' Oedipus Rex'' and set in the underground gay culture of 1960s Tokyo. It stars Peter as the protagonist, a young transgender woman, and features O ...

'' (1969), and

Akio Jissoji (March 29, 1937 – November 29, 2006) was a Japanese television and film director best known outside Japan for the 1960s TV series ''Ultraman'' and ''Ultraseven'', as well as for his auteur erotic ATG-produced Buddhist trilogy , , and . ...

's ''Mujo'' (1970).

References

Sources

* * * (orig. English article fro
Minikoni (N°70)
*

History

See also

References

Sources

Further reading