LECTURE & SCREENING Onibaba

Lecture at 6:30 pm
Keiko I. McDonald, Professor of Cinema and Literature, the University of Pittsburgh, discusses how noh masks and theatrical aspects are exploited in Onibaba.

Screening at 7:30 pm
Onibaba
1964, 103 min., b/w, 35mm.  In Japanese with English subtitles.

Directed and written by Kaneto Shindo. Cinematography by Kiyomi Kuroda. Music by Hikari Hayashi. With Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Sato, Taiji Tonoyama and Jukichi Uno. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Janus Films, Cowboy Pictures and Toho.

In Kaneto Shinodo’s intense psychological thriller set in Japan’s civil war era, a mother and her daughter-in-law survive by killing soldiers and selling their armor. When a friend of the younger woman’s husband turns up and begins an affair with her, this drives the older woman mad with jealousy. She puts on a demon’s mask to scare them, but finds she cannot take the mask off of her face, since she has been taken by evil spirits.