Friday, June 13, 2008
Moscow Bestows Lifetime Achievement Award on Kitano
Time for one nugget of news. Director Kitano Takeshi will receive a lifetime achievement award at the upcoming Moscow International Film Festival. News release here, program details here. Above is the poster they've designed for it -- nice.
MIFF is also showing the latest film from 96-year-old director Shindô Kaneto, titled Teacher and Three Children (Hana wa Chiredomo, 『花は散れども』).
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6 comments:
Take-san is king! I'm so happy for him. I also hope to watch the last Shindo somewhere, I wonder if it'll be release in Europe...
Kitano is one of my favorite filmmakers. He richly deserves the honor being bestowed upon him. It's almost surreal that I have been revisiting many Kitano films in the last week and now I get to read this. Congrats to the master.
Really enjoy this blog, keep it up Jason!
Thanks for the kind words.
At home Kitano's films are are hit and miss critically and at the box office. Here, he's not lauded as one of Japan's great filmmakers but overseas his reputation as "The King" is sealed. Has anybody read Gerow's book yet? Does it address this gap?
Personally I think the "Lifetime achievement award"should go to Shindo instead.Moscow actually "discovered" Shindo and introduced him to the world.
I think many know about this perception gap regarding Takeshi.
Oshima Nagisa's place in the J-culture was much more difficlut to explain to foreingers.
Aceface
Most know about the Kitano gap but it hasn't been written about in-depth.
I was surprised to read Shindô's Naked Island sold to 62 territories through its screening at Moscow. Must have been a record for a Japanese film at that time -- even today 50 is still a major achievement.
I've had Gerow's book sitting on my shelf for months now but I haven't gotten around to reading it. I should really get on that!
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