A certain type of cinephile weeb (hello) esteems maybe no post-New Wave Japanese director more highly than Shinji Sômai, but it’s the nature of such fandom that his brilliance––expertly plotted, emotionally precise films shot in some of the most incredible long takes (Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion should be the benchmark)––hadn’t quite gone westward. (Despite being a commercial and critical smash in Japan: Sailor Suit and Machine Gun was the country’s top-grossing film in 1981, while Typhoon Club won the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Grand Prix.) Except he’s suddenly a filmmaker of the moment, and after last year’s retrospective at Japan Society the age of ruddy DVD rips is gone: Cinema Guild released Typhoon Club on a 4K UHD, one might expect the same of P.P. Rider, and next Friday brings their theatrical rerelease of Moving, arguably the ideal starting point for his work.
Metrograph will begin a retrospective of all three on Friday, August 2, and we’re pleased to debut its trailer. Here’s their official summary: “Shinji Sômai’s tragic death at age 53 in 2001 robbed Japanese cinema of one of its foremost talents, a poet of alienation, frustration, and youthful revolt whose 13 films show a distinct and compassionate perspective, likened by critic Chris Fujiwara to that of Jean Vigo and Nicholas Ray for his lyrical depictions of adolescence. Revered in his native country––where his admirers include Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Hirokazu Kore-eda––but too-little-screened abroad, Sômai’s revelatory cinema can be experienced here with recent restorations of three of his greatest evocations of youth in all of its loneliness, rage, and beauty.”
Watch the preview below: