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With a career spanning over fifty years and thirty films, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa is regarded as one of the most important and influential directors in cinema history.

His films spanned a range of genres, from action to drama and the release of Seven Samurai in 1950 brought about unprecedented international acclaim for the cinema of Japan.

This mini-season of three Kurosawa classics celebrates his ground-breaking achievements as one of Japan's most prolific and beloved filmmakers.

From Rashomon to Seven Samurai and rounding up with his Shakespearean epic Ran, this curated programme is a chance to catch these classics of Japanese cinema on the big screen once again.

Born in Tokyo in 1910, Kurosawa was encouraged to watch theatre and films at a young age by his parents and was already an avid cinema fan at 6 years old.

As a teenager, Kurosawa was a keen drawer and would later have a brief stint as a painter, exhibiting his work though never able to make a living from his art.

In 1936, he joined a new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L (the studio would later go on to be known as Toho) as an assistant director, working closely with established filmmaker Kajirō Yamamoto. 

During this time, Kurosawa worked on 24 films, 17 of which were directed by Yamamoto. During this time, his on-set responsibilities included lighting, dubbing, editing, stage construction and script polishing – all skills he would utilise when directing his own films.

Most importantly, he learned the significance of screenwriting, and realised how lucrative this skill could be; as he progressed from assistant director to a director in his own right, he later wrote or co-wrote all of his own films.

Kurosawa directed his first feature film in 1943 with Sanshiro Sugata. Following the war, he would direct the critically acclaimed film Drunken Angel (1946), casting little-known actor Toshiro Mifune, who would go on to collaborate with Kurosawa on another fifteen films, including two of the most beloved Japanese films of all time: Rashomon and Seven Samurai. 

His films are remarkable for both their visual style and the depth and complexity of their characters; they explore domesticity and family relationships, as well as the juxtaposition of the rural past and the urban present.

Epic in scale, Kurosawa's films explore honour, power, and structures of violence in society  – themes which have been picked up in the many adaptations and remakes of his work in Western cinema, from The Magnificent Seven (1960) to The Last Man Standing (1996) and the recent Oscar-nominated Living.

A bold and visionary storyteller, Akira Kurosawa is rightly heralded as one of Japan's most significant cinematic voices; don't miss this chance to catch these epic, striking tales on the big screen once again.

Rashomon (1950)

From Su 12 Mar — Book Now

Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, Rashomon is a riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice.

Its story follows four different characters, each giving different accounts of a man's murder and the rape of his wife, which Kurosawa explores with striking imagery, ingenious use of flashbacks and unreliable narration. 

This eloquent masterwork revolutionised film language and introduced Japanese cinema—and a commanding new star by the name of Toshiro Mifune—to the Western world. 

Rashomon was the first Japanese film to receive significant international attention: it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, an Academy Honorary Award at the Oscars in 1952, and is the origin of the Rashomon effect – a storytelling effect where a single event is shown via contradictory perspectives.

Seven Samurai (1954)

From Fri 17 Mar — Book Now

Directed, co-written and edited by Akira Kurosawa in 1954, Seven Samurai remains one of the most significant and respected Japanese films ever made. Set in 1586, during the Sengoku period of Japanese history, it follows the story of a village of farmers, who hire seven warriors to combat murderous thieves.

Featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, and anchored in Japanese culture, Seven Samurai blends philosophy and entertainment in an epic tale of courage and hope.

Hugely influential, it went on to inspire a direct Hollywood remake in The Magnificent Seven (1960), as well as The Guns of Navarone (1961) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). Still a masterpiece in its own right, Seven Samurai would go on to shape the action genre throughout the rest of the century.

Ran (1985)

From Fri 24 Mar — Book Now

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the avid thirst for power.

Ran was Kurosawa's third and final adaptation of Shakespeare following his version of Macbeth in Throne of Blood (1957) and Hamlet in The Bad Sleep Well (1960). All three films were highly acclaimed.

While Kurosawa's earlier samurai epics were more adventurous and light-hearted, Ran was cold, remote and more violent. Ran features several parallels to the story of King Lear: an old king, driven mad after unwisely dividing his kingdom among his three sons. 

Rose Butler is a film programmer for Picturehouse Cinemas and a freelance writer based in London.

Tickets are £8 and free for Picturehouse Members.