KURONEKO

In the organizer's words:

Director: Kaneto Shindo
Screenplay: Kaneto Shindo
Japan 1968, 99 minutes
In Japanese language with subtitles in English language

Description:

ILLUSIONS IN JAPANESE FILM

What medium could develop the theme of "illusions" via the recording camera lens as a counterpart to the perceiving human eye more effectively than film? Two Japanese titles in our series revolve around the construction of reality as well as the subjective view of it. Before both screenings at Monopol Kino, film and cultural studies expert Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger will introduce us to the respective film and its roots in Japanese culture and explore the question of how we as viewers are seduced and captivated by cinematic illusion. Just two years after the first publication of Yasushi Inoue's novella The Hunting Rifle - the literary model for Thomas Larcher's opera of the same name - Akira Kurosawa's "iconic work" Rashomon (Stiglegger) was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival and caused an international sensation for Japanese cinema for the first time. Here, as there, events are depicted from multiple perspectives: In Hunting Rifle , the hunter's life is told entirely differently from the point of view of three women, while in Rashomon , witness testimonies contradict each other about the course of events following a rape. "The horrifying thing is that there seems to be no truth," as a monk in the film states during a conversation at the Rashomon gate. Kaneto Shindo's Kuroneko depicts the revenge of two women: After being raped and murdered, these women lie in wait for samurais who pass through the Rashomon Gate. The two spirits, who take revenge on the male sex, travel between this world and the afterlife until their husband or son, for whom they had waited in their human life, returns. Toshio Hosokawa's opera Matsukaze, in which the ghosts of two sisters await the return of their deceased lover in the distance, is also set in a limbo-like situation.

Lecture by Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger

Price information:

Price group 10