Anthology Film Archives 

October 10, 2012: Icarus Films and Anthology Film Archives are excited to present the U.S. theatrical premiere engagement of A MAN VANISHES (1967, 130 minutes, b&w), Shohei Imamura's multi-layered investigation into the case of a missing office worker, along with a program of five of his rare (never before released in the U.S.) documentary films. 

Imamura's fiction features have earned him recognition as 

"one of the most significant filmmakers of Japan's postwar generation" (Dave Kehr, New York Times)—he twice won the Palme d'Or—but his incisive documentaries have been overlooked for too long. Throughout his career, he moved fluidly between fiction and non-fiction, refusing to distinguish between the two, and famously remarking "I'd like to destroy this premise that cinema is fiction." 

These six films, all produced during the pivotal period in his career between 1967 and 1975, form an essential part of Imamura's body of work. In them, we can most clearly see what film historian Donald Ritchie called "one of Imamura's major themes…[the] confrontation of illusion with reality." 

PROGRAM SCHEDULE:

 
WEEK-LONG THEATRICAL ENGAGEMENT!

A MAN VANISHES / NINGEN JOHATSU

1967, 130 mins, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation. An Icarus Films release.

One of his greatest and most challenging films, and perhaps his most definitive statement on the nature of ‘documentary’, A MAN VANISHES began as an investigation into one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in Japan each year. Imamura focuses on one particular case, following the man’s fiancée as she desperately searches for him. But as the film progresses, its status as non-fiction becomes complicated. Imamura hires an actor to pose as an investigator, while the woman ultimately grows more interested in Imamura himself than in her missing fiancé. The film culminates in a scene that explodes any stable sense of fiction and reality.

 
“In a coup de cinéma that has been equaled only by Abbas Kiarostami’s CLOSE-UP, Imamura transforms fact into artifice, being into acting, personal identity into a tenuous fabrication.” –James Quandt, CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO

–Thursday, November 15 through Sunday, November 18 at 6:30 nightly, and Monday, November 19 through Wednesday, November 21 at 8:45 nightly.

 
IN SEARCH OF THE UNRETURNED SOLDIERS IN MALAYSIA / MIKAHEI O OTTE

1971, 50 mins, digital video. An Icarus Films release.

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IN SEARCH OF THE UNRETURNED SOLDIERS IN THAILAND / MIKAHEI O OTTE N°2

1971, 50 mins, digital video. An Icarus Films release.

In these two remarkable films, Imamura travels first to Malaysia and then to Thailand, to investigate the lives and experiences of those Japanese soldiers who, during World War II, chose to desert from the Japanese Army and remain in Southeast Asia.

–Thursday, November 15 at 9:00, Saturday, November 17 at 9:00, and Monday, November 19 at 6:30.

 
KARAYUKI-SAN, THE MAKING OF A PROSTITUTE / KARAYUKI SAN

1975, 70 mins, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation. An Icarus Films release.

A film about another kind of “unreturned soldier”, KARAYUKI-SAN finds Imamura traveling to Malaysia to interview Kikuyo Zendo, one of the countless Japanese women who were kidnapped or otherwise sold into sexual slavery in order to service the Japanese military in Southeast Asia. 74 years old at the time of filming, she offers a frank and harrowing testimony into her horrific wartime experiences, and the factors that have led her to choose exile over repatriation.

“Perhaps the most brilliant and feeling of Imamura’s fine documentaries.” –Joan Mellen, THE WAVES AT GENJI’S DOOR

–Friday, November 16 at 9:00, Sunday, November 18 at 5:00, and Wednesday, November 21 at 7:00.

 
THE PIRATES OF BUBUAN / BUBUAN NO KAIZOKU

1972, 46 mins, digital video. An Icarus Films release.

Remote and impoverished islands in the Philippines are revealed to be the home of rival factions of pirates in this absorbing investigation into a little-known way of life.

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OUTLAW-MATSU RETURNS HOME / MUHOMATSU KOKYO E KAERU

1973, 47 mins, digital video. An Icarus Films release.

“IN SEARCH OF THE UNRETURNED SOLDIERS was about former soldiers of the Japanese army who chose not to return to Japan after the war. … Two years later, I invited one of them to make his first return visit to Japan and documented it in OUTLAW-MATSU RETURNS HOME. During the filming, my subject Fujita asked me to buy him a cleaver so that he could kill his ‘vicious brother.’ I was shocked, and asked him to wait a day so that I could plan how to film the scene. By the next morning, to my relief, Fujita had calmed down and changed his mind about killing his brother. But I couldn’t have had a sharper insight into the ethical questions provoked by this kind of documentary filmmaking.” –Shôhei Imamura

–Saturday, November 17 at 4:15, Sunday, November 18 at 9:00, and Tuesday, November 20 at 6:30.