(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)
The Movie: "Woman in the Dunes"
Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel
The Pitch: A bug-hunting schoolteacher finds himself stranded in a sandpit with a woman, at the mercy of demented villagers, and forced into a life of shoveling sand.
In Japan, where rural population decline is an ongoing problem, there are places in the countryside that will actually pay people to live there. As 2023 began, the BBC and CNN reported that the government has upped its incentive program to 1 million yen per child for families willing to move away from the crowded capital of Tokyo to less thriving towns.
The villagers in "Woman in the Dunes" have devised a different scheme. They prey on solo travelers like...
The Movie: "Woman in the Dunes"
Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel
The Pitch: A bug-hunting schoolteacher finds himself stranded in a sandpit with a woman, at the mercy of demented villagers, and forced into a life of shoveling sand.
In Japan, where rural population decline is an ongoing problem, there are places in the countryside that will actually pay people to live there. As 2023 began, the BBC and CNN reported that the government has upped its incentive program to 1 million yen per child for families willing to move away from the crowded capital of Tokyo to less thriving towns.
The villagers in "Woman in the Dunes" have devised a different scheme. They prey on solo travelers like...
- 1/14/2023
- by Joshua Meyer
- Slash Film
By Raymond Benson
“Sand In Your...”
By Raymond Benson
One of the hallmarks of 1960s art house cinema was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, adapted by Japanese author/playwright Kōbō Abe from his own 1962 novel. The picture won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and was nominated that same year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. The following year, Teshigahara was nominated for Best Director (but lost to Robert Wise for The Sound of Music).
This is avant-garde cinema at its finest—or perhaps its most tedious, depending on your taste.
The story is straight-forward. Niki (played by Eiji Okada, the male lead from Hiroshima mon amour), a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist (he studies bugs), has ventured to a desert-like area of Japan (does one exist?) near the sea to find specific species of insects. He is stranded and needs a place to stay overnight.
“Sand In Your...”
By Raymond Benson
One of the hallmarks of 1960s art house cinema was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, adapted by Japanese author/playwright Kōbō Abe from his own 1962 novel. The picture won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and was nominated that same year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. The following year, Teshigahara was nominated for Best Director (but lost to Robert Wise for The Sound of Music).
This is avant-garde cinema at its finest—or perhaps its most tedious, depending on your taste.
The story is straight-forward. Niki (played by Eiji Okada, the male lead from Hiroshima mon amour), a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist (he studies bugs), has ventured to a desert-like area of Japan (does one exist?) near the sea to find specific species of insects. He is stranded and needs a place to stay overnight.
- 8/10/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Japanese art filmmaking writ large by director Hiroshi Teshigahara: a strange allegorical fantasy about a man imprisoned in a sand pit, and compelled to make a primitive living with the woman who lives there. Perhaps it's about marriage... Woman in the Dunes Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 394 1964 / B&W / 1:33 full frame / 148 min. / Suna no onna / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Hiroko Ito Production Design Totetsu Hirakawa, Masao Yamazaki Produced by Tadashi Oono, Iichi Ichikawa Cinematography Hiroshi Segawa Film Editor Fuzako Shuzui Original Music Toru Takemitsu Written by Kobo Abe Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the 1960s the public interest in art cinema reached out beyond France and Italy, finally giving an opening for more exotic fare from Japan. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara earned his moment in the spotlight with 1964's Woman in the Dunes, an adaptation of a book by Kobo Abe.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
In the 1960s the public interest in art cinema reached out beyond France and Italy, finally giving an opening for more exotic fare from Japan. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara earned his moment in the spotlight with 1964's Woman in the Dunes, an adaptation of a book by Kobo Abe.
- 8/9/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
There are many names that come to mind when one looks back at the Japanese New Wave era: Nagisa Oshima, Koreyoshi Kurahara, Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, and many, many more. The movement truly began with the adaptation of Shintaro Ishihara’s novel Crazed Fruit, released with the same name by director Ko Nakahira in his 1956 film. The film would kickoff a movement, a collective stream of films that juxtaposed a time in Japanese history where the traditional society of Japan clashed with the coming of a more contemporary way of living. The American occupation ended in 1952, bringing forth a difficult period for the Japanese individual and the struggle for the realization of purpose in a changing country.
One cannot discuss the Japanese New Wave without Hiroshi Teshigahara and his collaborations with Japanese writer Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Teshigahara didn’t make many films during this period of extreme...
One cannot discuss the Japanese New Wave without Hiroshi Teshigahara and his collaborations with Japanese writer Kobo Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Teshigahara didn’t make many films during this period of extreme...
- 9/1/2015
- by Anthony Spataro
- SoundOnSight
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