Teruo Ishii (1924–2005) was a Japanese film director best known in the West for his early films in the Super Giant series, and for his films in the Ero guro (“erotic-grotesque”) subgenre of pinku eiga (soft porn movies) such as Shogun’s Joys of Torture (1968). He also directed the 1965 film, Abashiri Prison. Read more…
Hayao Miyazaki (born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, Japan) is a prominent filmmaker of many popular animated feature films. He is also a co-founder of Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company.
He remained largely unknown to the West, outside of animation communities, until Miramax released his 1997 Princess Mononoke. By that time, his films had already enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan and Central Asia. For instance, Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan until Titanic (1997) came out a few months later, and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. His later film, Spirited Away, had that distinction as well, and was the first anime film to win an Academy Award, topping Titanic in the Japanese box office. Howl’s Moving Castle was also nominated but did not receive the award. Read more…
Takeshi Kitano (Beat Takeshi, Beat Kitano, Takashi Kitano), born 1947, is a Japanese filmmaker, comedian, actor, film editor, presenter, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, and one-time video game designer who has received critical acclaim in Japan and abroad for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. Since April 2005 he has been a professor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. In Japan Kitano is known primarily as a TV host and comedian. Read more…
Takashi Miike (born August 24, 1960) is a highly prolific and controversial Japanese filmmaker. Born in Yao, Osaka, Japan, Miike graduated from Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film (despite claiming to have attended classes only rarely). He has directed over seventy theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. In the years 2001 and 2002 alone, Miike is credited with directing fifteen productions. Read more…
Akira Kurosawa (1910–98) was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. In a career that spanned 50 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films, and is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers since the conception of cinema. Read more…