DISCUSSION & SCREENING Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari)

Discussion at 6:30 pm

A panel discussion on the specifics of Japanese horror films, how trends have changed in this genre and its sub-genres, and why people want to be entertained by supernatural phenomena.

Panelists
Daisuke Miyao, series co-curator
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, New York University
Kent Jones, Associate Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center and Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment magazine, co-programmers of the Walter Reade Theater’s 2002 horror film series
 
Screening at 7:30 pm
Ugetsu (Ugetsu Monogatari)
1953, 96 min., b/w, 35mm. In Japanese with English subtitles.

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Written by Matsutaro Kawaguchi and Yoshikata Yoda, based on the story by Akinari Ueda. Cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa. Music by Fumio Hayasaka. With Machiko Kyo, Mitsuko Mito, Kinuyo Tanaka, Masayuki Mori, Sakae Ozawa. Print from Cowboy Pictures.
 
Kenji Mizoguchi’s classic film is a ghost story told in a highly artistic style with exquisite cinematography, music and acting. Based on Akinari Ueda’s works, which themselves are adaptations of classic Chinese ghost stories, Ugetsu portrays a potter from the medieval civil war period, destroyed by his own greed when he meets a beautiful princess who leads him to the otherworld.

Tickets: $10, Japan Society members, seniors & students, $5.