LACMA

FOR THE MOST UP-TO-DATE MUSIC LISTINGS, VISIT LACMA.ORG. TO WATCH A SLIDESHOWOF WORKS FROM THIS EXHIBITION VISIT LACMA.ORG. 8 public programs film Tuesday Matinees Every Tuesday at 1 pm, lacma presents a classic fi lm. Admission $2; $1, seniors (62+). For a complete schedule of matinees, see the Calendar. TICKETS & INFORMATION Film tickets can be purchased at the museum box offi ce or at lacma.org. Prices: $7 for members, seniors 62+, and students with ID; $10 for nonmembers. Tickets to the second fi lm on a double bill are $5. All fi lms and guests are subject to change, and many fi lms are unrated and may not be appropriate for younger viewers. lacma and the American Cinematheque are the Los Angeles venues for this two-part retrospective of Japanese New Wave fi lmmaker Nagisa Oshima, which premiered at the 2008 New York Film Festival. The retrospective features new 35mm prints, titles never before screened in Los Angeles, and two screenings of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Oshima's only fi lm in English, long unavailable for theatrical presentation. The series' curator, James Quandt of the Cinematheque Ontario, writes: "Oshima's works exhibit wit, beauty, furious invention, profound feeling…(and) a desperate intelligence. Oshima made fi lms as if they were a matter of life and death." Boy (Shonen) May 8 | 7:30 pm | New 35mm print In this double portrait of a desperate family and the grasping society in which they live, a ten-year-old child fakes being hit by cars so his parents can collect damages from the shaken drivers. Based on a true story that shocked Japan, Oshima called his fi lm "a prayer." 1969/b&w/105 min./Scope Death By Hanging (Koshikei) May 8 | 9:25 pm | New 35mm print A Korean student is hanged for rape and murder but his body will not cooperate with the state: it simply refuses to expire. Oshima's most Brechtian fi lm. 1968/b&w/117 min./VistaVision Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Senjo No Meri Kurismasu) May 9 | 5 pm & 7:30 pm | New 35mm print In a POW camp in 1942 Java, an androgynous, guilt- ridden British soldier (David Bowie) becomes an object of obsession for a fanatical camp commander (Ryuichi Sakamoto) whose tastes run to hara-kiri, Shakespeare, and East-West cultural debates over tea. When a series of incidents in the camp strips away the civility, the two men are propelled into deadly confl ict. 1983/ color/122 min./VistaVision The Sun's Burial (Taiyo No Hakaba) May 15 | 7:30 pm | New 35mm print A resourceful prostitute in a slum outside Osaka com- petes for black-market profi ts with a devious militarist known as the Agitator. Tawdry and gaudy, this notorious fi lm has been called "a scroll painting of Hell." 1960/color/87 min./Scope Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon No Yoru To Kiri) May 15 | 9:10 pm | New 35mm print The wedding of two leftist "comrades" quickly turns into a bitter round of denunciations, ferocious accusations, and self-recrimination. With its provocative title invoking the Holocaust and audacious style (it's entirely comprised of only forty-seven long takes), Oshima's fi lm was deemed infl ammatory and withdrawn days after its release. 1960/color /107 min./Scope Kyoto, My Mother's Place May 16 | 5 pm | Free A personal fi lm about Oshima's birthplace. 1991/color/50 min./digital projection A Town of Love and Hope (Ai To Kibo No Machi) May 16 | 7:30 pm An impoverished young boy plays a con game, selling and reselling his homing pigeon to pay for his mother's medical bills. In his remarkable fi rst fi lm, Oshima employs a simple tale with heart-breaking results. 1959/b&w/62 min./Scope The Ceremony (Gishiki) May 16 | 8:40 pm | New 35mm print The Ceremony focuses on a young boy and his mother, who return home from Manchuria after the war to rejoin the powerful Sakadura clan. Oshima chronicles the family's fortunes and woes from 1946 to the present as its mem- bers gather for burials, weddings, and reunions. The most ambitious Japanese fi lm of its decade. 1971/color /122 min./Scope Three Resurrected Drunkards (Kaette Kita Yopparai) May 22 | 7:30 pm | New 35mm print Shot in widescreen with eye-popping color and a crazed score, this raucous satire follows a trio of hapless young men who are mistaken for Korean stowaways when their clothes are stolen during a dip in the sea. 1968/color/80 min./Scope Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs (Nihon Shunka-ko) May 22 | 9 pm Arriving in Tokyo to take university entrance exams, a group of provincial students spend their time singing dirty songs and engaging in violent sexual fantasies. From this surreal combination of comedy and karaoke, Oshima crafts a penetrating portrait of a nihilistic new generation trapped in the past and yearning for freedom. 1967/color/103 min./Scope 100 Years of Japanese Cinema May 23 | 5 pm | Free Oshima disdains Japan's cinematic giants in his idiosyn- cratic history that travels from the silent period to the arrival of the Japanese New Wave. 1995/color & b&w/52 min./digital projection Gohatto (Taboo) May 23 | 7:30 pm A complex drama of honor, revenge, and (taboo) homo- sexual desire among samurai, Oshima's most recent fi lm after a hiatus of fourteen years is set in Kyoto in 1865 during the tumultuous last days of the Shogunate. With its gorgeous production design and cinematography, Gohatto evokes the golden age of Japanese cinema. 2000/color/101 min. The Catch (Shiiku) May 23 | 9:25 pm | New 35mm print A black GI captured in a Japanese farming village becomes a pawn in a power struggle as the villagers squabble over their "catch." Within this microcosm Oshima explores his favorite themes: the hypocrisy, xenophobia, and the insularity of Japanese society. 1961/b&w/97 min./Scope preview screening Summer Hours May 5 | 7:30 pm When we pass on, what becomes of the objects we have cherished during our lives? In this Chekhovian drama about loss and change, Olivier Assayas subtly explores the fractious relationship between three adult siblings when they return to their childhood home to dispose of their mother's collection of nineteenth-century paintings and furniture. One of four fi lms commissioned by the Musée d'Orsay in honor of its twentieth anniversary. 2008/color/102 min. | Scr/dir: Olivier Assayas; w/ Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Edith Scob special free screening Playboy Jazz on Film June 11 | 7:30 pm Playboy's Jazz on Film sponsors an evening of fi lm clips that highlight the greatest names in jazz. For a tenth year in the Bing Theater, fi lm archivist Mark Cantor will present a series of rare and always swinging perfor- mances featuring such artists as Freddie Hubbard, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra with Louie Bellson, Louis Armstrong, Bill Evans, Fats Waller, Jack Teagarden, Lennie Tristano, and many others. weekend Film Series French Crime Wave May 29–June 20 Enter the violent underworld of French society in the 1950s, '60s and '70s—a seedy carousel of jewel thefts, bank heists, smoky police stations, and tacky cocktail lounges populated by weary cops and hardened crimi- nals attired in fedoras and trench coats, the crime wave uniform de rigeur. This series of fourteen brilliantly crafted thrillers by such directors as Jean-Pierre Melville, the revered "father" of the French crime fi lm, René Clement, Jules Dassin, Jacques Becker, Bertrand Tavernier, Alain Corneau, Claude Sautet, Louis Malle, and François Truffaut features iconic, high-style performances by the greatest French stars of the genre: coldblooded heart throb Alain Delon, seasoned professional Jean Gabin, tough guy Lino Ventura, cocky Jean-Paul Belmondo, sultry Jeanne Moreau, and slatternly Isabelle Huppert as the bored wife of a psycho cop in French Equatorial Africa. A Q & A with director Alain Corneau will follow the screening on May 30. Special thanks to the Film & TV Department, French Consulate and Air Tahiti Nui. Check the calendar for a full French Crime Wave schedule. Director Series In the Realm of Oshima I am not interested in making fi lms that can be understood in fi fteen minutes. —Nagisa Oshima

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