Rétrospective Seijun Suzuki

Come along to Les Cinéastes cinema for a retrospective of the work of director Seijun Suzuki: a pop rebel of the silver screen and one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers of the 1960s, a master of genre cinema. Every week, discover a new film with three screenings on Thursdays, Saturdays and Tues...

Seijun Suzuki: a pop rebel of Japanese cinema and one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers of the 1960s, a master of genre cinema. Don’t miss a retrospective of this director’s work, featuring eight films, at Les Cinéastes cinema from 3 September.

A filmmaker as virtuosic as he was iconoclastic, Seijun Suzuki (1923–2017) left his mark on the history of cinema through a unique approach to genre filmmaking, in which aesthetic audacity and formal freedom blossom into fascinating visual and narrative compositions. In the heart of the 1960s, Seijun Suzuki transformed every B-movie entrusted to him by the renowned Nikkatsu studio into a dizzying, colourful and theatrical visual masterpiece, which did not shy away from verging on the surreal. Steeped in irony, the filmmaker’s deadpan humour defuses the gravity of classic crime plots, leaving the field open to a style of direction whose inventiveness evokes, in turn, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard. Transcending his minimalist sets into living tableaux, and playing on the expressionism of lighting and camera movements, Seijun Suzuki manages to blend kabuki and film noir, yakuza and pop art with breathtaking ease. Hailed as a key influence by filmmakers as diverse as Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-wai and Damien Chazelle, Seijun Suzuki’s work finally deserves to be recognised as a major reference point in Japanese and global auteur cinema.

This retrospective offers the chance to (re)discover his cult films *Tokyo Drifter* and *The Killer’s Mark* in splendid 4K restorations, as well as showcasing feature films shot at Nikkatsu Studios.

PROGRAMME:

2–8 September: *Carmen de Kawachi* (1966)
9–15 September: *The Flesh Barrier* (1964)
16–22 September: *Flowers and Waves* (1964)
23–29 September: *The Story of a Prostitute* (1965)
30 September–6 October: *The Life of a Tattooed Man* (1965)
7–13 October: *The Drifter of Tokyo* (1966)
14–20 October: The Killer’s Mark (1967)

Three screenings per week per film: late Thursday afternoons (6.00 pm), Saturday afternoons (4.30 pm) and Tuesday evenings (8.30 pm).