NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s NIKKATSU ACTION CINEMA The label said it all: Nikkatsu akushon. Nikkatsu was a studio that had been around since the silent days and akushon was “action,” written in the katakana alphabet for foreign words. During their peak, from the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s, Nikkatsu action films evoked a cinematic world neither foreign nor Japanese. It was a mix of the two, where Japanese tough guys had the swagger, moves, and even the long legs of Hollywood movie heroes. It was a place where the Tokyo streets, Yokohama docks, and Hokkaido hills took on an exciting, exotic aura, as though they were stand-ins for Manhattan, Marseilles, or the American West. Nikkatsu Action was less gritty realism than macho romanticism. One guy with guts, smarts, and a pair of quick fists could beat a whole gang of villains. The films’ action took place in an internationalized space outside the usual Ozu / Mizoguchi matrix of family, community, and workplace, and audiences responded to this reflection of their postwar, Western-influenced world with enthusiasm, making Nikkatsu’s “Diamond Line” of male leads, beginning with Yujiro Ishihara, some of the top stars of the decade. But foreign critics long ignored Nikkatsu Action, and Japanese film histories by Donald Richie and Joan Mellen passed over the entire genre. And even though the rise of director Seijun Suzuki to Western cult fame in the 1980’s brought Nikkatsu Action more attention abroad, it was often in a negative way. Critics hailed Suzuki as an overlooked and discarded master, and dismissed most of the films of his studio colleagues as hack work, despite having seen so few of them. The aim of this retrospective series, then—first presented at the 2005 Udine Far East Film Festival—is to present a representative non-Suzuki selection of films from all periods of Nikkatsu Action, featuring the work of popular stars Yujiro Ishihara, Akira Kobayashi, Jo Shishido, Tetsuya Watari, Ruriko Asaoka, and top directors Koreyoshi Kurahara, Yasuharu Hasebe, and Toshio Masuda, in order to educate and entertain North American audiences. At the same time, we hope the series may broaden the critical discussion and provide opportunities for the discovery of new classics of Japanese genre cinema that may stand alongside those already enshrined in the critical canon and made available on home video in the West.
OUTCAST CINEMA IS SEEKING U.S. and Canadian theatrical bookings for this eight-film series
 
Please contact us for more information about the films
or to inquire about a booking.
CURRENT SCREENINGS:
 
  1. September 24-26    Fantastic Fest — Austin, TX
  2. September 28         Japan Society — New York, NY
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