July 19–August 28, 2024
One of the great directors of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, Hiroshi Shimizu depicts the struggles of people on the margins with a light touch, avoiding melodrama and inflecting even the most serious stories with humor and profound humanity.
Read full description
-
Mr. Thank You
-
Children of the Beehive
-
Ornamental Hairpin
- Upcoming
Films - Upcoming
Events - Selected
Objects - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Ornamental Hairpin
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 194135mm Archival Print
Friday, July 19 7:00 PM
Yasujiro Ozu regular Chishu Ryu and legendary actress/director Kinuyo Tanaka star in Hiroshi Shimizu’s elegiac tale of two strangers brought together by fate at a mountain onsen resort.
View Details
Mr. Thank You
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193635mm Archival Print
Sunday, July 21 7:00 PM
"Mr. Thank You is the driver of a bus chugging its way through the hills and villages of rural Japan. Shooting entirely on location, [Hiroshi] Shimizu merrily tracks along the winding paths. Irresistible” (National Film Theatre, London).
View Details
Forget Love for Now
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1937Saturday, July 27 7:00 PM
A single mother turned bar hostess struggles to raise her son in the face of social condemnation and economic exploitation in this set-bound, fog-drenched noir of sinister alleyways, Art Deco nightclubs, and maternal duty.
View Details
A Hero of Tokyo
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193535mm Archival Print
Wednesday, July 31 7:00 PM
A woman turns to operating a hostess bar in order to save her children from poverty, only to find her secrets revealed, in Hiroshi Shimizu’s melodrama, tinged with social critique and noirish influences.
View Details
Notes of an Itinerant Performer
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 194135mm Archival Print
Sunday, August 4 4:30 PM
A wandering performer is welcomed into the home of a tea merchant but must fight for the family’s business after his death, in Hiroshi Shimizu’s classic melodrama of social obligation and women’s sacrifice.
View Details
Children in the Wind
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193735mm Archival Print
Friday, August 9 7:00 PM
Two brothers are separated when their father is falsely arrested in one of Hiroshi Shimizu’s most beloved films, shot in a variety of outdoor locations and filled with the director’s sweetly observational approach.
View Details
Four Seasons of Children: Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 193935mm Archival Print
Sunday, August 11 3:00 PM
Two young protagonists weather the death of their father and the changes of the four seasons in Hiroshi Shimizu’s follow-up to his beloved Children in the Wind. With a lyricism that “looks forward to early Satyajit Ray” (John Gillett).
View Details
Children of the Beehive
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1948Friday, August 16 7:00 PM
A group of orphans and a returning veteran search for jobs across a scarred postwar Japan in Hiroshi Shimizu’s remarkable work of Japanese neorealism, filmed entirely on location—including in a Hiroshima still marked by the atomic bomb.
View Details
Mr. Shosuke Ohara
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1949Sunday, August 18 7:00 PM
A kindly rich man gives away his fortune to all who ask for it in this village comedy of manners and misfits. Its 1949 postwar setting provides the film a surprisingly elegiac look at how “times have changed.”
View Details
Dancing Girl
Hiroshi Shimizu
Japan, 1957BAMPFA Collection
Wednesday, August 28 7:00 PM
1950s Japanese sex symbol Machiko Kyo stars as a young sister ready to shake up her older sibling’s safe life in the Asakusa entertainment district in Hiroshi Shimizu’s bouncy postwar melodrama of dance-hall girls, lecherous men, and women’s sacrifice.
View Details
July 19–August 28, 2024
Born in 1903 (the same year as Yasujiro Ozu), Hiroshi Shimizu made some 150 films between 1924 and 1959. While the majority of those have been lost, a significant number of excellent films have survived. Drawing from a retrospective organized by the Japan Society and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, Hiroshi Shimizu: Notes of an Itinerant Director offers a chance to rediscover the work of one of the great directors of the golden age of Japanese cinema.
Shimizu’s films depict characters on the move, out of place, or in the margins—performers, migrant workers, people with disabilities, working women, and, especially, children. His protagonists are buffeted by economic vicissitudes and social or political circumstances. As they endeavor to find their way, they may traverse the pathways of a quiet spa town or the teeming streets of Tokyo, grassy rural fields or dusty mountain roads. Usually shooting on...
Born in 1903 (the same year as Yasujiro Ozu), Hiroshi Shimizu made some 150 films between 1924 and 1959. While the majority of those have been lost, a significant number of excellent films have survived. Drawing from a retrospective organized by the Japan Society and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, Hiroshi Shimizu: Notes of an Itinerant Director offers a chance to rediscover the work of one of the great directors of the golden age of Japanese cinema.
Shimizu’s films depict characters on the move, out of place, or in the margins—performers, migrant workers, people with disabilities, working women, and, especially, children. His protagonists are buffeted by economic vicissitudes and social or political circumstances. As they endeavor to find their way, they may traverse the pathways of a quiet spa town or the teeming streets of Tokyo, grassy rural fields or dusty mountain roads. Usually shooting on location—creating a sense of openness, space, and place—Shimizu’s camera observes them, usually from a distance, and sometimes taking a journey of its own, tracking across a landscape or interior, revealing as if unscrolling the details of the surroundings. He chronicles the struggles of his characters with a light touch, avoiding melodrama and inflecting even the most serious stories with humor and profound humanity.
—Kate MacKay, Associate Film Curator
More Less
Co-organized with the National Film Archive of Japan and the Japan Foundation, New York.
Thanks to Alexander Fee, Japan Society; Edo Choi, Museum of the Moving Image; Akinaru Rokkaku, the Japan Foundation, New York; Kenta Tamada, Mika Tomita, the National Film Archive Japan; Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Osamu Minakawa, Kokusai Hoei; Hitomi Hosoda, Shochiku; Yasui Yoshio, Kobe Planet Film Archive; and Chiyo Mori, Miki Zeze, Kadokaw.
