BEYOND OZU: HIDDEN GEMS OF SHOCHIKU STUDIOS coming to The Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Presents

Yoru no henrin (The Shape of Night). 1964. Japan. Directed by Noboru Nakamura. Courtesy Shochiku

Beyond Ozu: Hidden Gems of Shochiku Studios
When: June 10 - July 9, 2022
Where: The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street, NYC

Founded in 1920 by a pair of peanut vendors who hoped to achieve the commercial success of Hollywood, the Shochiku film studio adopted Western methods of filmmaking (a training institute, a star system, a studio campus) and made Western techniques of storytelling (closeups, flashbacks, panning shots, dissolves, montage editing) into something distinctively Japanese.

 

Thanks to the generosity of Shochiku, together with the National Film Archive of Japan and Japan Foundation, New York, MoMA will present a centennial selection of hidden treasures, most of them in archival 35mm prints, from the studio that produced such masterpieces as Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Keisuke Kinoshita’s Ballad of Narayama, Nagisa Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth, and Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri.

 

This exhibition goes beyond these perennial favorites to deepen appreciation of the history of Japanese cinema, featuring newfound discoveries like Hiroshi Shimizu’s Eternal Heart (1929), Kôzaburô Yoshimura’s Temptation (1948), Tai Kato’s The Ondekoza (1981), and Kôhei Oguri’s The Sting of Death (1990).

 

The exhibition opens on June 10th with the North American premiere 4K restoration of Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond (1979).

Complete series information and screening schedule is available here.