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ESSAYS

YASUJIRO OZU

In presenting this select retrospective of the works of Yasujiro Ozu, BIFF gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Shochiku Co.

The films of Yasujiro Ozu examine the basic struggles that we all face in life: the cycles of birth and death, the transition from childhood to adulthood, and the tension between tradition and modernity. Their titles often emphasise the changing of seasons, a symbolic backdrop for the evolving transitions of human experience. Seen together, Ozu's œuvre amounts to one of the most profound visions of family life in the history of cinema. - NICK WRIGLEY

• Yasujiro Ozu - Donald Richie
  
• A modest extravagance: Four looks at Ozu - David Bordwell
  David Bordwell's Ozu: The Poetics of Cinema is the other major English-language text on Ozu. Bordwell is a prolific writer on Asian cinema; his Film Art and Making Meaning are standard and inspiring texts.
• Is Ozu slow?1 - Jonathan Rosenbaum
  Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for the Chicago Reader, is the author of numerous books, most recently on Kiarostami. Jonathan chaired BIFF's first FIPRESCI jury in 2002.
• Performance in the films of Yasujiro Ozu - Donald Richie
  Donald Richie has lived in Tokyo on and off since 1947 and has written widely on both film and Japan, including the seminal book Ozu in 1974. We regret that ill-health prevents his attending BIFF this year and wish him a speedy recovery.Ozu and the West4 - Nick Wrigley
  
• Footnotes
  1. Excerpt from an article originally published in Senses of Cinema, Issue 4, March 2000, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/4/ozu.html
  2. Times Literary Supplement, 25 October 1974, pp. 1189, 1191.
  3. Available in its entirety only in Japanese and French, though the beautiful final chapter, 'Sunny Skies', can be found in David Desser's 1997 collection of critical pieces devoted
  to Tokyo Story, published by Cambridge University Press.
  4. Excerpt from an article originally published in Senses of Cinema, Issue 26, May-June 2003, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/ozu.html
  

ABEL FERRARA

Neurosis Hotel
An Introduction to Abel Ferrara

He who is not busy being born, is busy dying-Bob Dylan

Is there any filmmaker more obsessed with death than Abel Ferrara? Not natural death, but murder: Ms .45 (1981), China Girl (1987), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992), Dangerous Game (aka Snake Eyes) (1993), and The Funeral (1996) all end with brutally final acts of killing-usually either by, or of, the central character. The Addiction (1995), like Ms .45 and Body Snatchers (1993), climaxes in an apocalyptic scene of mass slaughter. The Funeral begins with a mysterious death and proceeds to investigate it. Violent disappearances poke gaping holes in the structures of The Blackout (1997) and New Rose Hotel (1998). Lone, deranged serial killers drive his early work, from The Driller Killer (1979) to Fear City (1984), then the organised, corporate killers take over in King of New York, New Rose Hotel, and 'R Xmas (2001). In The Blackout, we even go beyond death, into a particularly disquieting glimpse of the afterlife.

Adrian Martin is film critic for Melbourne's Age newspaper; author of The Mad Max Movies (2003), Once Upon a Time in America (1998) and Phantasms (1994); co-editor of Movie utations (2003, forthcoming); and recipient of the Byron Kennedy Award (1993) and the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing (1997). He is currently a Doctoral candidate in Monash University's Faculty of Art and Design, and is completing books on Terrence Malick and Brian de Palma.

CONTRIBUTE TO SENSES OF CINEMA