From the hand of the Japan Foundation, we continue to enjoy the cinema of Hiroshi Shimizu, considered the true genius of Japanese cinema by his colleagues Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. In March, you can see each other The fork, perhaps the one that best exemplifies the words of Pablo García Canga about the films filmed by Shimizu in Japanese spas: "in those stories, drama and feelings move forward, often, sense to be seen, lost among a light everyday humor; However, between these baths in the river, those massages and those dinners, the days went by until, in the last sequences, an emotion emerges that is difficult to name, a story that passed in silence".
In 1948, Shimizu, who had founded an orphanage after the war, directed what is considered his masterpiece, The children of the hive, a moving portrait starring a group of orphaned children. To produce it, he created his own independent company. Since then he has alternated assignments from large studios with independent projects such as Mr. Shosuke Ohara, which hints at an ironic and melancholic self-portrait.
The cycle closes with Shiinomi School, another film about childhood and education, recurring themes in Shimizu's cinema. "These are films - points out García Canga - that leave a strange flavor, lucid about the ambivalence that is the normalization of children, aware of what can be lost on the way to education but what, at the same time, they know it's necessary".
11.03.26 WEDNESDAY / 18.00 h
12.03.26 THURSDAY / 20.00 h
The Shiinomi School / Shiinomi School
Shiinomi Gakuen / Shiinomi gakuen
HIROSHI SHIMIZU. The Japan. 1955. VOS SPANISH*. B/N. 98′. 16 mm.
Int. Kyoko Kagawa, Setsuko Shimazaki, Jukichi Uno, Ranko Hanai.
Yamamoto, university professor of psychology, and his wife, Fumiko, they have two children. one of them, Judo, suffers from a type of paralysis. For this reason, the couple decides to invest all their money in creating a school where children with similar special needs can get enough love and care to gain confidence in themselves.
