To launch our new Select Japan screening strand, we're paying tribute to the late filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, who passed away in March, with his masterpiece, the flamboyently theatrical and subversively Brechtian Double Suicide.

Many films have drawn from classic Japanese theatrical forms, but none with such shocking cinematic effect as Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide. In this striking adaptation of a Bunraku puppet play (featuring the music of famed composer Toru Takemitsu), a paper merchant sacrifices family, fortune, and ultimately life for his erotic obsession with a sex worker.

Masahiro Shinoda was one of the last living links to both the Golden Age of Japanese cinema of the 1950s and the Japanese New Wave period of the 1960s. His films include Pale Flower  and Assassination (both 1964), the first adaptation of Shusaku Endo's Silence in 1971, and his glorious documentary of the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics.    

This screening will be introduced by Select Japan curator George Crosthwait.

Cast:
Kichiemon Nakamura II, Shima Iwashita, Hōsei Komatsu, Yūsuke Takita