Alison, thanks for mentioning Kurosawa [below].
I had the one-time privilege of teaching a college film course, and asked my
son to tell me the most profound film he'd seen. He said, "Ikiru" ['to
live', in Japanese], written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. Once I'd seen
it, I had to near-agree with son Christopher. An excellent
description/critique of the film's by a U Melbourne grad student:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/13/ikiru.html
Kurosawa's slim paperback 'memoir', _Something Like An Autobiography_ will
be well worth folks' reading time.
For the course's studied films, I placed "Ikiru" center stage with British
novelist, playwright, essayist JB [John Boynton] Priestley's film "Last
Holiday", 1950, which's subject-related to "Ikiru". Discussion of the
themes, alone, would've taken the entire course!
But we focused on techniques, especially, and in the last quarter of the
course, students grouply video-created their own version of one 'scene' in a
short story. They went from storyboards to filmscripts to acting and
videotaping their scene. What a tremendous learning experience that was for
all of us!
BTW, a couple JB Priestly's quotes may interest some of you: "Marriage is
like a visit in your worst clothes." and "A loving wife will do anything
for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him."
Hmmmm....... ;-)
Best,
Judy
2008/10/2 Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
- Suzuki's Shakespeare productions were
> pretty stunning, as are Kurosawa's films). Actors kill to play those
> roles. And no wonder.
>
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