"The astounding season of Masumura films [is] the stand-out discovery of the year."
Roger Clarke, The Independent
"Imagine if a cutting edge Asian film-maker such as Takashi Miike, or Chan-wook Park, had been transported back to the 1960s and genetically spliced with Douglas Sirk. Sounds incredible, but that's probably the only way your brain will accept such stunning movies."
Phelim O'Neill, Guardian Guide
"There is a sensation of exclusive delight upon encountering the unsettling, unpredictable, gloriously subversive world of Masumura."
Steve Rose, Guardian
"An intense irresistible force."
Oshima Nagisa, Director: In The Realm Of The Senses (Ai No Corrida)
" A director straining against all limits."
Tony Rayns, Sight & Sound
Films
Kisses (Kuchizuke)
Japan | 1957 | 74 mins | B&W
Masmura's debut feature with its stripped down narrative and handheld camerawork sent a shock wave through Japanese cinema in much the same manner as Godard in Europe.
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Giants and Toys (Kyojin to Gangu, aka The Build Up)
Japan | 1958 | 95 mins | B&W
With the same key cast as Kisses and similarly shot in glorious ‘scope, Masumura fashioned this eye-boggling critique of Japan's Post-war Economic Miracle.
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The Precipice (Hyoheki)
Japan | 1958 | 97 mins | B&W
A truly jaw-dropping film set in the Japanese Alps which comes across as a strange hybrid of German Mountain Movies crossed with the delirious melodrama of Douglas Sirk.
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A False Student (Nise Daigakuse)
Japan | 1960 | 94 mins | B&W
After failing the entrance exam to a prestigious university, a young man, ashamed of letting down his mother, pretends to enroll. He falls in with a hardcore group of student political activists who, misreading his duplicity, mistake him for a police informer – the very incarnation of all they ideologically oppose.
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A Wife Confesses (Tsuma wa kokuhaku suru)
Japan | 1961 | 91 mins | B&W
The spirit of Resnais runs deep in this existential melodrama. A young woman on a mountaineering holiday is accused of murdering her husband. Tied to a mountain between her brutalising spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes.
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Red Angel (Akai Tenshi)
Japan | 1966 | 95 mins | B&W
One of Japan's most notorious and internationally criminally under-exposed films. Shocking, beautiful and moving in equal measure, this is one of Masumura's very finest achievements.
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The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (Hanaoka Seishu No Tsuma)
Japan | 1967 | 100 mins | B&W An extraordinarily bizarre period film about physician Hanaoka Seishu, the first doctor to use general anesthetic.
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Blind Beast (Moju/Mohju,
aka Warehouse)
Japan | 1969 | 86 mins | Col
An intense no-holds-barred exploration of perversion, art and sado-masochism. A blind sculptor, with the aid of his mother, kidnaps and imprisons a young fashion model as a muse for his efforts to sculpt the perfect form. More...
