CINEMA REBORN - A near unknown late film by the master Yasujiro Ozu adds lustre to the program - TOKYO TWILIGHT (Japan, 1957)

Yasujiro Ozu

We’re still awaiting some specially written program notes but here are some thoughts and a link to some more info on the Cinema Reborn website. These are mostly gleaned from the  2018 Berlin Film Festival website. That festival was the launching place for the new Digital restoration by the Shochiku, the company which produced 51 of Ozu's 54 films. 

Tokyo Twilight
Original Japanese poster

In many of the recent polls for the greatest film ever made Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) was rated in the top ten. 

More later…..

The premiere of the restoration at his year's Berlinale was accompanied by this online program note:

Their mother abandoned sisters Takako and Akiko a long time ago, and their father has had to raise his two daughters alone. Now that they are grown, the respected businessman recognises how unhappy they are. After a fight with her alcoholic husband, Takako returns to live with her father. Her younger sister Akiko, who yearns for a different life, is also part of the household. Akiko has an affair with student Ken, a drifter who spends his time gambling. When she gets pregnant, he cuts her off. When she goes looking for him at a mah-jongg parlour, she meets a woman who knows things about Akiko’s childhood that only a mother could … 

The theme of the end of a family living together is one that Japanese directing maestro Yasujiro Ozu often reworks, and here he has given it a dramatic and sombre twist. In a barren, cold Tokyo, a young woman is broken by her father’s harsh nature and silence. This largely unknown work is considered Ozu’s darkest post-war film. 

At Cinema Reborn Tokyo Twilight will be introduced by Jane Mills

Have a trawl around the Cinema Reborn website  to find the full program and notes on most of the other films that will be screened. Subscription sales giving admission to the entire sixteen film program taking place from 3-7 May at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in the Entertainment Quarter in Moore Park, Sydney, will commence on Tuesday 20 March. Links will be put up when they open.