Sunday, September 24, 2006

Hiroshi Sugimoto chooses favorite films for Modern screenings

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Presents
Films Selected by Hiroshi Sugimoto

October 7 - November 25
This film series is presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time; on view to the public at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from September 17, 2006, through January 21, 2007. Tickets are $7.50; $5.50 for Modern members

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO Film Series

Enjoy this rare opportunity to see seven Japanese films carefully selected by Mr. Sugimoto to be shown in conjunction with the exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time. Organized and first presented at the Japan Society in New York in the fall of 2005, it is with their cooperation and approval that the Modern Art Museum proudly offer this unique series here in FW.

Mr. Sugimoto comments: "The Japanese films I have chosen are less cinema verité, more theatrical. The synergy of the artifice of photography and of the theater generate a three-dimensional fiction. The more outrageous the fiction the more credible it becomes. No doubt this is how ancient myths were born."

THE FILMS:

The World of Geisha (1973)
Saturday, October 7, 2 pm
With this film—based on an original tale by Kafu Nagai that was banned for its sexual explicitness—Tatsumi Kumashiro, the leading director of the "Nikkatsu Roman Porno" genre, brilliantly succeeds in bringing the art of the Japanese erotic woodblock print to life.
72 minutes

Due to sexual content, this film is recommended for adults only.


Ten Dark Women (1961)
Saturday, October 14, 2 pm
Filmed in high-contrast black and white and set amidst the background of Japan's explosive economic growth, this film depicts a philandering playboy whose wife and nine mistresses seek vengeance on him.
105 minutes


The Water Magician (1933)
Saturday, November 4, 12:30 pm
This Kenji Mizoguchi masterpiece from the silent era portrays the ethos of a country on the cusp of modern nationhood.
110 minutes


The Face of Another (1966)
Saturday, November 4, 2:30 pm
A man who has lost his face in an accident acquires another man's face and a double life through the ministrations of a plastic surgeon/psychiatrist. The artists who collaborated on this film were pioneers of Japanese literature, music, art, and architecture in the 1960s.
124 minutes


Blind Beast (1969)
Saturday, November 11, 1 pm
A blind sculptor imprisons a perfectly proportioned woman in a quest for the world's first "Sensory Art."
Due to sexual content, this film is recommended for adults only.
86 minutes


Tokyo Drifter (1966)
Saturday, November 11, 3 pm
Director Seijun Suzuki explodes the yakuza film genre with his overtly colorful sets, costumes, and dramatic lighting in this visionary experimental film.
82 minutes


Tokyo Kid (1950)
Saturday, November 25, 2 pm
Set amidst postwar ruins, this beautiful, tragic musical stars Hibari Misora as an orphan surrounded by the eccentric tenants of a low-rent tenement building.
81 minutes


(Film descriptions are excerpted from the Japan Society brochure for Hiroshi Sugimoto Film Series: The Moving Image of Modern Art.)

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