Special Series

Free, Special Events

The Ballad of Narayama

楢山節考

Directed by: Shohei Imamura
1983 / 131 minutes / R 18+

With nature as a silent witness, the countdown to death begins

In a remote village in 19th century Japan, a grim tradition continues: those who reach the age of 70 must be left to die at the summit of Mount Narayama. The strong-willed Orin, who is on the brink of reaching the cut-off age, is at peace with her morbid fate. But before her final moment arrives, she decides she must prepare by attending to unfinished family business, including arranging her eldest son Tatsuhei’s marriage and resolving various village conflicts. 

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, The Ballad of Narayama unflinchingly explores themes of mortality and family duty, along with the reality of the harshness of rural life. Under Imamura’s masterful direction, this captivating drama emphasises the raw beauty and brutality of nature, while also reminding us that all human beings cannot escape the cycles of life.

Talk Events

Imamura: A Messy Japanese Filmmaker?

Famously, Imamura said “I like to make messy films.” Hon. Associate Professor Jane Mills, PhD (UNSW) will discuss how many cinephiles and critics, however, dispute the director’s claim, pointing to a consistent style and recurring themes, ideas, images and characters. Although he disparaged the notion of a Japanese filmic essence, he has nonetheless been described as “The most Japanese of Japanese filmmakers” —an epithet usually reserved for Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.

What are we to make of this bold, often outrageous, certainly contradictory, filmmaker? Can messiness coexist with orderliness? Is Imamura an “essentially” Japanese filmmaker, or is this notion a chimera?

Details

Venue: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Date: 27 October, 2024 (Sun)
Talk: 13:10 – 13:40
Screening: 14:00 – 16:20

Everyday Desire: The Films of Shohei Imamura

Adrian Danks, Associate Professor at RMIT University and Co-curator and President of the Melbourne Cinémathèque, will chart Imamura’s movement from the youth cycle of the early 1960s to his work’s increasing preoccupation with the resilience and place of women in Japanese society in such landmark films as Insect Woman and The Ballad of Narayama.

The talk will also examine the director’s anthropological and often primal approach to filmmaking which forges together fiction and documentary and highlights aspects of Japanese life and society that persist in the face of wide-scale modernisation and westernisation.

Details

Venue: ACMI, Melbourne
Date: 2 November, 2024 (Sat)
Screening: 14:30 – 16:50
Talk: 17:00 – 17:40