English
The ABC Museum in Madrid is holding an impressive exhibition of the storyboard of the Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa until 12 June. Entitled La mirada del samurai: Los dibujos de Akira Kurosawa (The Gaze of the Samurai: The Drawings of Akira Kurosawa) this exhibition provides a view of his complex body of work, which marked an era in international cinema and drew the world’s attention to Japanese culture.
The exhibition is comprised of 120 drawings made by Kurosawa that were used for reference during the shooting of Kagemusha, The Shadow Warrior (1980); Ran (1985); Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990); Rhapsody in August (1991); The Sea is Watching (2002) and Not Yet (1993).
Akira Kurosawa was born in the Omori district of Tokyo, Japan in 1910. His father’s side of the family were once samurais, but now worked in education and commerce. Kurosawa was passionate about drawing and also cinema, which had only recently arrived in Japan. His first job in the industry was narrating silent films, though this ended when talkies appeared.
In 1938 he enrolled as a director’s apprentice in the Toho film studio where he worked with Kajiro Yamamoto. These weren’t easy years for filmmaking in Japan because the government had tight control over productions, ensuring that they adhered to their nationalist agenda. During this period Kurosawa produced films which largely served as propaganda for the militaristic government.
However, Kurosawa’s free-thinking tendencies led him to join unions and write impassioned columns in defence of labour rights. This point of view was reflected in his film, No Regrets for Our Youth, which is about the dramatic life of a woman who is made to suffer after the arrest of her political dissident husband.
Kurosawa was an extreme perfectionist. Not only did he find powerful images to give depth to the stories he told, but he also went out of his way to make these images as realistic as possible. He had a castle built on the slopes of Mount Fuji and then burned it to the ground in order to create the dramatic effect he needed for his film, Ran, which was based on Shakespeare’s King Lear.
His films were often inspired by classic Western literature, something that has caused him to be accused by the Japanese of being too ‘Western’. Conversely, in the West, Kurosawa’s work is seen as reflecting Eastern culture, with its themes, focus and dramatic content reminding critics of Kabuki theatre and Jidai-geki cinema.
In 1950 he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, with Rashomon, based on a classic Japanese story. This film dazzled the international film industry. Four years later he was once again awarded in Venice for his film, Seven Samurai. After this period of recognition, he suffered a critical and public backlash in the 60s which led him to attempt suicide in 1971. Nonetheless, he persisted, and receiving no funding and enjoying little popularity in his own country, he went to the Soviet Union, where they were willing to finance his work. There he made Dersu Uzala which was highly successful. After this triumph he was able to finance the making of Ran, which gave him his second Oscar.
More information:http://www.museoabc.es/es/exposicion/35
Nancy Guzman
The filmography of Akira Kurosawa is as varied as it is excellent, so if you are renting Madrid accommodation this is a wonderful opportunity for you to visit the ABC Museum and see and enjoy his storyboard illustrations.
Translated by: Ben Palmer
