The Moon Has Finally Risen: The Films of TANAKA Kinuyo

“These six films of uncommon splendour reveal a filmmaker of the highest order.” –Le Monde

The Moon Has Finally Risen: The Films of Kinuyo Tanaka

One of Japan’s, and indeed the world’s, greatest and most successful actors who seamlessly transitioned from the silent to the sound era, Kinuyo Tanaka (1909–1977) dedicated her life to cinema. She played defining roles for such formidable directors as Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita, Hiroshi Shimizu, Heinosuke Gosho, and had an especially long collaborative partnership with Kenji Mizoguchi (The Life of OharuUgetsuSansho the Bailiff). While Tanaka’s acting career has been internationally praised and her stardom tied to two waves of Japanese Golden Age cinema over the course of more than 250 roles, many of which are exceptional and gutsy, her body of work as a filmmaker has been largely under-appreciated and overlooked outside of Japan. TIFF Cinematheque was among the first venues in the West to champion this pioneering force, devoting a retrospective to her acting and directing work back in our first season of programming as Cinematheque Ontario.

Nearly 30 years later, TIFF Cinematheque is thrilled to participate in “Tanaka fever” — a global (re)discovery of this important oeuvre — as we present all six of her films in new restorations, a significant filmography from the only woman making commercial films in Japan’s post-war era and one which challenged many societal norms during a time of considerable transformation. Tanaka was the second woman in Japan to make a film (the first was Tazuko Sakane with her sole fiction film New Clothing from 1936), but her formal and thematic daring and her innate iconoclasm ensured her productivity in a heavily male-dominated field, thereby freeing herself from the archetypal image of the suffering, yet determined woman and mother, which made her fame.

ANDRÉA PICARD
TIFF Film Curator



LOVE UNDER THE CRUCIFIX
お吟さま

Friday, June 24, 6:15PM • In-Person, TIFF Bell Lightbox
Directed by TANAKA Kinuyo | 1962 | 102 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles | 4K Restoration

Tickets & Details


GIRLS OF THE NIGHT
女ばかりの夜

Sunday, June 19, 7:30PM • In-Person, TIFF Bell Lightbox
Directed by TANAKA Kinuyo | 1961 | 93 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles | 4K Restoration

Tickets & Details


THE WANDERING PRINCESS
流転の王妃

Saturday, June 11, 7:30PM • In-Person, TIFF Bell Lightbox
Directed by TANAKA Kinuyo | 1960 | 102 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles | 4K Restoration

Tickets & Details


FOREVER A WOMAN
乳房よ永遠なれ

Friday, June 10, 6:15PM • In-Person, TIFF Bell Lightbox
Directed by TANAKA Kinuyo | 1955 | 106 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles | 4K Restoration

Tickets & Details


Celebrating Women in Film

Continuing our Celebration of Women in Film in July, the Japan Foundation, Toronto will be spotlighting the most important and prolific female documentary filmmaker from Japan, HANEDA Sumiko. Long neglected in the West, Haneda’s body of work consists of as poetic postwar documentaries that are attuned to the roles of women in society and cycles of rural life.

Deepen your knowledge of traditional Japanese culture over this Canada Day Weekend (July 1 – 3, 2022) with our free online screenings of celebrated documentaries: Ode to Mount Hayachine and Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa. Register below!

Online Film Screening:
Ode to Mount Hayachine

Friday, July 1 – Sunday July 3
早池峰の賦 | Directed by HANEDA Sumiko | 1982 | Documentary | Japanese with English subtitles

A surprising box-office hit in Japan, HANEDA Sumiko’s documentary epic revels in the patterns of Japan caught between tradition and modernity. Shot in the foothills of Iwate Prefecture’s mystical Mt. Hayachine, the film records a year in the life of the area’s villages and villagers as they prepare for kagura performances, a dance-theater form with origins in religious rituals (and now mainly performed for eager tourists). 

 

Online Film Screening:
Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa

Friday, July 1 – Sunday July 3
山中常盤ー牛若丸と常盤御前 母と子の物語ー | Directed by HANEDA Sumiko | 2005 | Japanese with English subtitles

This extraordinary film presents Japanese classical scroll painting as never before. The Yamanaka Tokiwa comprises twelve scrolls painted by IWASA Matabei some 400 years ago. With skillful framing, rhythmic pacing, and a newly composed joruri score (ballad singing with shamisen accompaniment), HANEDA Sumiko has created a stirring cinematic work from a static painting that is one of Japan’s cultural treasures.

Register Here


Online Talk: Women Directors in Contemporary Japanese Cinema

Available Now on the JFT Youtube Channel

This special presentation with Dr. Colleen Laird (UBC) focuses on the emergence of women directors in early 21st century Japanese cinema industries. In this talk, Dr. Laird introduces prominent directors who have been successful in both domestic and international markets, and she discusses the various factors that supported a new career pathway for women in film, as well as ongoing barriers that pose difficulties for continued success.  Presented in English.

Watch Here