Japanese film festival opens in Moscow.

26/7 Tass 7

MOSCOW, July 26 (Itar-Tass) — A Japanese film festival opens on Tuesday in Moscow. The program of the festival includes three films of Takeshi Kitano and films by New Wave filmmakers.

The festival will end on August 1. “We have made up the program so that spectators could see how the Japanese cinematograph developed from the 1950s to 1990s,” sources from the festival directorate told Tass on Tuesday. Entertainment films as well as serious films of New Wave filmmakers will be shown, they said. “All in all, seven films will be shown, including three films by Takeshi Kitano,” the sources added.

The so-called New Wave was born in France at the end of the 1950s, when French filmmakers decided not only to entertain people but also to make them think and encourage them to activity.

Ten years after the New Wave came to Japan, making Japanese films more and more popular in the West. In particular, in 1983, Shohei Imamura won the Cannes Festival Golden Palm for his film Narayama Bushiko (Ballad of Narayama). This film will be shown in Moscow.

Violent Cop, Kitano’s debut film of 1989 will be also on the program of the festival. Kitano himself will not come to Moscow. Last time he visited Russia in 2008, when he received a prize for outstanding contribution to world cinema at the Moscow Film Festival.

He told Tass then that he knew Russia well, learning about it from Dostoevsky novels and getting acquainted with Russian culture during his student years. He said he would never dare to cinematize Russian classics.

Takeshi Kitano is well known in the world not only as an actor and filmmaker, but also as a painter and writer.

The festival was organized by the Illuzion Cinema (where the films will be shown), the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy to Russia. Entrance will be free.

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