Donald Richie

Imagining JapanThe Western view of Japan is revealed as a view in a mirror: we look at Japan, but we see ourselves. The distinguished film critic, author and film-maker Donald Richie explores this theme, inspired by the festival’s extensive Japanese programme and particularly by the series of ‘imaginings’ of Japan by Western directors presented under the rubric ‘Bridge in the Rain’.Donald Richie has lived in Japan since 1954, he is recognised as one of the world’s experts on Japanese cinema and its history. His curatorial activity includes retrospectives of Ozu, Yanagimachi, the Japanese Film and Japanese Experimental Film. From 1968-73 he was Curator of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. As a film critic he has published widely and currently contributes to the International Herald Tribune and The Japan Times. His many books on Japanese cinema include the ground½breaking history The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (with Joseph Anderson, 1959) and he also written extensively on other aspects of Japan in The Inland Sea and collected essays A Lateral View and Partial Views. To mark the occasion of his Serge Daney lecture, the festival has invited Donald Richie to present a programme of his own films. In the late 1960s, having made short films since the 1940s, Richie produced a startling, influential and very personal series of experimental films. Very much in tune with his film-making contemporaries in the US, in these films he explored new narrative or diary approaches to film, but at the same time they were a strong and profound response to his experiences and encounters in Japan. As such, these films provide a further commentary on the theme of a Westerner’s observation of Japan, from a perspective that is nevertheless steeped in that culture.