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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. > >