Cinematheque: Masahiro Shinoda’s The Assassination & Youth in Fury

Films: 7:00pm: The Assassination (1964) 8:45pm: Youth in Fury (1991) Location:ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square, Flinders Street, Melbourne More Information: Visit the Melbourne Cinematheque Presented in conjunction with The Japan Foundation.

With a wealth of interesting influences, including Orson Welles, Shakespeare & kabuki theatre, Masahiro Shinoda (1931-) began as an assistant to Yasijuro Ozu working at Japan’s leading film company, Shochiku. Soon promoted to director, Shinoda became one of the contemporaries at the head of Japanese New Wave cinema, revolutionizing screen culture in Japan & influencing scores of filmmakers on an international scale.  

As a filmmaker, Shinoda’s heroes are often on the losing or vanquished side of battle, a tradition that he attributes to Japanese experience in the aftermath of World War II. His work, often branded as pessimistic, provides his marginal heroes with the means of examining Japanese society, politics & subcultures. By combining cinematic modernity with his passion for classical Japanese art forms, the
director’s inclination towards a hyperstylized, indulgent aesthetic infuses his stormy tales with a visual energy that lifts this “pessimism” into the realm of the polemic & poetic.  

Opening the season is The Assassination (1964), a period film shot in stunning black & white CinemaScope, & Youth in Fury (1960), the earliest of the season & the film that cemented Shinoda’s status as one at the forefront of Japanese New Wave. Both films feature musical scores composed by Tori Takemitsu, who would become a Shinoda staple, and a popular cultural figure in Japan.