Yoshishige Yoshida

Yoshishige Yoshida

Born: February 16, 1933
Died: December 8, 2022
in Fukui, Japan
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.

Movies for Yoshishige Yoshida...

Kijû Yoshida: What Is a Filmmaker?
Title: Kijû Yoshida: What Is a Filmmaker?
Character: Self
Released: April 9, 2008
Type: Movie
An overview of the life and work of legendary Japanese filmmaker Kijû Yoshida, a notable figure of the Japanese New Wave.
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Yoshida …or: The Explosion of the Story
Title: Yoshida …or: The Explosion of the Story
Character: Self
Released: March 28, 2008
Type: Movie
A documentary about Yoshishige (Kijû) Yoshida's creative process for his most significant film, the 1969 avantgarde tour-de-force Eros + Massacre (1969).
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Dreams of Tokyo, Dreams of Cinema
Title: Dreams of Tokyo, Dreams of Cinema
Character: Narrator (voice)
Released: August 14, 1995
Type: Movie
A documentary about cinematographer Gabriel Veyre's adventures introducing cinema to Japan and South America. Veyre was a traveling cameraman for the Lumiere Co. He declared cinema dead only 2 years after it's inception after he saw a villager jerk a woman's head to face the camera when he was filming a small group of them.
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The Cinema of Ozu According to Kiju Yoshida
Title: The Cinema of Ozu According to Kiju Yoshida
Character: Self
Released: November 18, 1994
Type: Movie
Yoshida grew close to Ozu Yasujiro during his time at Shochiku, where he was able to observe the legendary master at work. Although Yoshida and his generation outspokenly rejected the values of Ozu, Kurosawa and the older humanist filmmakers, over the years Yoshida found himself increasingly drawn back to Ozu’s films, fascinated by their unique rigor, formal language and delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. For Japanese television, Yoshida adapted his own text into a four part documentary, which he also condensed into the one hour version.
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Cinématon
Title: Cinématon
Character: N°789
Released: December 20, 1978
Type: Movie
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.
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Title: Beauty of Beauty
Character: Himself/Narrator
Released: January 7, 1974
Type: TV
Documentary series about art. Yoshida's camera documents the history of painting and artistic expression with delicate intimacy.