Akira Kurosawa Retrospective

We're kicking off February with a Samurai double feature of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro, both screening with brand new 4K restorations courtesy of the incredible talents at Janus Films! Yojimbo: A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men. Sanjuro: Jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a "proper" samurai on its ear. Less brazen in tone than its predecessor but equally entertaining, this classic character's return is a masterpiece in its own right.

A brand new 4K restoration of High And Low is coming to The Frida Cinema as part of fourteen film retrospective on the films of Akira Kurosawa! Thank you to Janus Films for restoring this masterpiece and allowing us to play it. The story of High And Low follows an executive of a Yokohama shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom. This highly influential domestic drama, adapted Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

Akira Kurosawa's three hour epic, Red Beard, is screening at The Frida Cinema with a brand new 4K restoration via our friends at Janus Films! Red Beard chronicles the tumultuous relationship between an arrogant young doctor and a compassionate clinic director. Toshiro Mifune, in his last role for Kurosawa, gives a powerhouse performance as the dignified yet empathic director who guides his pupil to maturity, teaching the embittered intern to appreciate the lives of his destitute patients. Perfectly capturing the look and feel of 19th-century Japan, Kurosawa weaves a fascinating tapestry of time, place, and emotion.

The penultimate film in our Akira Kurosawa retrospective is his epic 1985 masterpiece, Ran, now restored in glorious 4K thanks to Rialto Pictures! A grand and visually breathtaking epic that transposes Shakespeare’s King Lear into the chaotic feudal era of 16th-century Japan of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ran stars screen legend Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging warlord who decides to divide his vast domain among his three sons in hopes of securing peace in his final years. Instead, his decision ignites a violent power struggle, as betrayal and ambition shatter his family and plunge the region into civil war. Stripped of power and driven into madness, Hidetora becomes a ghost of his former self, wandering through the wreckage of a world he once ruled. With its masterful use of color, and meticulously staged battle sequences, Ran is both an intimate tragedy, and a large-scale historical spectacle.  In delivering his haunting and majestic summation of his lifelong explorations of power, betrayal, and the devastating consequences of human ambition, Kurosawa employs sweeping landscapes, intricate battle sequences, and vivid color symbolism to create a world teetering on the edge of chaos. About the Restoration Ran’s original 1985 production was made possible through a French-Japanese collaboration between Kadokawa and French producer Serge Silberman, with distribution later handled by companies such as Orion and Studiocanal. That international partnership was rekindled decades later when Kadokawa and Studiocanal brought on French laboratory Éclair to restore the film in 4K under Studiocanal’s supervision, using the original negative as its source. Much of the restoration was completed manually, frame by frame, with color grading approved by Masaharu Ueda, one of Ran’s three cinematographers and a longtime collaborator of Kurosawa.

The past, present, and future. One man's dreams...for every dreamer. We are concluding our fourteen film retrospective paying tribute to the great Akira Kurosawa with his surrealist masterpiece Dreams. Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature. Dreams holds a unique place in Akira Kurosawa’s career and reputation. It’s often regarded as one of his most personal and spiritual works--a literal painting of his imagination come to life. Don't miss a chance to see it on the big screen!