Special Programs in Focus

• KUROSAWA Akira
• Japan
• 2015
• 207min

It is likely that Kurosawa Akira’s Seven Samurai (1954) is the most frequently remade film in all of world cinema. Though certainly the same director’s Rashomon (1951) is a serious candidate for that unique distinction, the idea o...

Special Programs in Focus

• Edward YANG
• Taiwan
• 2015
• 237min

A Brighter Summer Day was inspired by a true incident, a touchstone from Yang’s youth: the killing of a 14-year-old girl by a male high school student in Taipei on June 15, 1961. Yang frames the film with recitations over the radi...

Special Programs in Focus

• Lucas BELVAUX
• France
• 2015
• 100min

Gaspard is a sports photographer. Alice is a successful lawyer. Nicolas is, for lack of a better word, an unemployed househusband. Gaspard and Alice are lovers, and Alice is married to Nicolas. This is the love triangle that ancho...

Special Programs in Focus

• Leos CARAX
• France
• 2015
• 119min

One time Les Cahiers du Cinema contributor Leos Carax’s ability to bend and sometimes break film conventions while paying homage to them showed early in his career. In Bad Blood, rebellious teen Alex works with his dead father’s c...

Special Programs in Focus

• Arnaud DESPLECHIN
• France
• 2015
• 180min

Twenty-nine-year-old Paul is a reluctant teacher, aspiring doctoral candidate and would-be archaeologist living a half-life. Living with a cousin and romantically attached to Esther for a decade, Paul finally reaches a breaking po...

Special Programs in Focus

• Julien DUVIVIER
• France
• 2015
• 105min

At a boarding school in the lakeside town of Heiligenstadt, introverted Vincent keeps to himself and misses his mother. His only enjoyment is looking after deer at the school. Vincent sees Marianne, a girl accompanying an old man ...

Special Programs in Focus

• Claude LELOUCH
• France
• 2015
• 102min

Claude Lelouch’s classic 1966 romance is as engaging and moving today as it was upon release. When a widow and a widower meet one Sunday evening at their children’s boarding school, it is the beginning of a cautious relationship i...

Special Programs in Focus

• Jacques DEMY
• France
• 2015
• 92min

A story of passion, Jacques Demy’s 1982 musical unfolds in 1955 Nantes against the backdrop of a shipyard strike. Francois, a striking metalworker, is engaged to Violette when he meets and falls in love with Edith, a married woman...

Special Programs in Focus

• OZU Yasujiro
• Japan
• 2015
• 136min

What do our parents, the people who raised us with the best of intentions, really think of us? And do we really want to know? In Ozu Yasujiro’s tender, breathtaking Tokyo Story, elderly parents Shukichi (played by Ozu regular Ryu ...

Special Programs in Focus

• KUROSAWA Akira
• Japan
• 2015
• 88min

*an extract from an original writing for Asian Cinema 100 […] This transcendence is already inscribed in certain aspects of the film itself. The photographic quality of the film tends toward total abstraction: the intricately mot...