To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa‘s birth, Ragtag is excited to present a six-film retrospective.
One of the most widely acclaimed directors of all-time, the late Kurosawa was a dynamic, exciting master of filmmaking. Not beholden to any one genre, the Japanese master left behind a diverse collection of groundbreaking work. “The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits. His films had an awe-inspiring power, physical and graphic. His indelible compositions seemed to have been burned into the screen. He defined a sense of possibility in movies." (Martin Scorsese)
PLEASE NOTE THE NEW DATES!
June 24: Stray Dog (1950) Considered Kurosawa’s first masterpiece, Stray Dog is a Dostoyevskian film noir about Murakimi, a rookie detective who loses his gun on a crowded Tokyo bus. After his gun is used in a murder, Murakimi embarks on an epic manhunt to find and arrest the perpetrator. “It’s obvious in the movie that at this point in Kurosawa’s career he was outgrowing his influences, and that, whether he knew it or not, he was destined to become more than a reliable genre craftsman.” (Terrence Rafferty)
July 1: Rashomon (1953) Rashomon is the film that put Kurosawa on the map in the West. A samurai has been murdered, and four different witnesses have four different stories.
July 8: Seven Samurai (1957) Perhaps Kurosawa’s most famous work, regularly ranking in the top ten of many best-film-of-all-time lists. In 16th century Japan, a group of samurai warriors find themselves defending a village against an army of kidnapping bandits.
July 15, 17: Yojimbo (1962) Inspired by the Westerns of John Ford, Yojimbo stars Toshir? Mifune, Kurosawa’s regular collaborator, as a samurai who wanders into a small village dominated by two rival gang leaders.
July 22, 24 High & Low (1963) “Undoubtedly the most complex detective film of all…It contains so many nuances of narrative, photographic technique and acting that it demands seeing far more than once.” (William K. Everson)
July 29, 31: Ran (1985) Kurosawa’s late-period masterpiece, transposing King Lear to period Japan, is one of the most exquisite spectacles ever made
Tickets are $4 for Ragtag members and $7 for others. Showtimes are Thursdays at 5:30pm (for all of the films) and Saturdays at 1pm (for the last three films).
