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Yoshishige Yoshida

Yoshishige Yoshida

Directing

Biography

Yoshishige Yoshida (吉田 喜重 Yoshida Yoshishige), also known as Kijū Yoshida, was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Graduating from Tokyo University, Yoshida entered the Shōchiku studio in 1955 and debuted as a director in 1960 with Rokudenashi. He was a central member of what came to be called the "Shōchiku Nouvelle Vague" along with Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda, and his works have been studied under the larger rubric of the Japanese New Wave. Like many of his New Wave cohorts, he felt restricted under the studio system and left Shōchiku in 1964 to start his own production company where he directed such films as Eros + Massacre. He has directed more than 20 films between 1960 and 2004. He has also written a number of philosophical books about his work and the cinema, including an award-winning study of Yasujirō Ozu.

Known For

Lumière & Company
6.3

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Lumière & Company

1995
The Affair
6.5

As a young woman, Oriko condemned her widowed mother for openly pursuing relationships with younger men. After her mother passes away, she finds herself in an unhappy, loveless marriage and begins to understand her mother’s actions.

The Affair

1967
Immortal Love
7.4

A young woman is forced by circumstance into a loveless marriage while still in love with another. This episodic tale follows their story through three decades of bitter conflict which engulfs their children and those around them.

Immortal Love

1961
Confessions Among Actresses
6.0

In this intricately layered Japanese film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.

Confessions Among Actresses

1971
Eros + Massacre
7.3

Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.

Eros + Massacre

1969
Cinématon
4.9

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Cinématon

1978
Akitsu Hot Springs
6.6

Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.

Akitsu Hot Springs

1962
A Story Written with Water
6.2

Struggling with his true emotions, dreams, memories of the past and the reality Shizuo is about to marry, but is torn between his wife-to-be and the love to his mother.

A Story Written with Water

1965
Bitter End of a Sweet Night
6.0

An opportunistic department store clerk gets involved with three women and attempts to manipulate them so he can move up the social ladder.

Bitter End of a Sweet Night

1961
Escape from Japan
5.7

As Japan is preparing to host the Olympics, a gang member wanting to go to America is sought after by the police after helping his friend conduct a robbery.

Escape from Japan

1964
Wuthering Heights
6.7

Young orphan Onimaru is adopted by the wealthy Yamabe family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Kinu. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Kinu, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Mitsuhiko, a man of means who befits her stature. Onimaru vows to win her back.

Wuthering Heights

1988
18 Roughs
6.7

Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.

18 Roughs

1963
Woman of the Lake
7.0

A married woman lets her lover take naked pictures of her. The photos end up in possession of a man who starts blackmailing the couple.

Woman of the Lake

1966
A Human Promise
6.7

An old woman has died and her widower with dementia confesses to killing her. After this, the story goes back in time to show the events leading up to her death.

A Human Promise

1986
Heroic Purgatory
7.0

Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.

Heroic Purgatory

1970
Affair in the Snow
6.9

In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.

Affair in the Snow

1968
Good-for-Nothing
6.9

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father. The woman senses good in him and tries to lead him on the right path.

Good-for-Nothing

1960
Kijû Yoshida: What Is a Filmmaker?
N/A

An overview of the life and work of legendary Japanese filmmaker Kijû Yoshida, a notable figure of the Japanese New Wave.

Kijû Yoshida: What Is a Filmmaker?

2008
Women in the Mirror
7.9

Three women who share memories of the Hiroshima disaster try to uncover the hidden family ties that may or may not bind them together.

Women in the Mirror

2003
Coup d'Etat
6.5

A freestyle biopic of Ikki Kita, the ultranationalist intellectual whose ideas inspired the failed military coup in 1936.

Coup d'Etat

1973