Cinema is a screen onto which we can project our fears, torments and the monstrosities of the world. The screen protects us from what we see, but cinema has also permanently anchored our nightmares around a few powerful images (empty houses, hostile attics and basements, demonic masks, bloodcurdling grimaces, disturbing postures). Throughout the summer, the Cinémathèque québécoise will be presenting a series of films encompassing more than one hundred and twenty years of horror, reminding us that what scares us most is to make the deepest of our fears tangible and credible.
A pair of women kills samurai and sells their possessions to earn a living. While one is having an affair with her neighbor, the other meets a mysterious samurai wearing a strange mask.
Kaneto Shindō
Kaneto Shindō was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film producer, and writer, who directed 48 films and wrote scripts for 238. His best known films as a director include Children of Hiroshima (1952), The Naked Island (1960), Onibaba (1964), Kuroneko (1968) and A Last Note (1995). His screenplays were filmed by directors such as Kenji Mizoguchi, Kōzaburō Yoshimura, Kon Ichikawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Seijun Suzuki, and Tadashi Imai. His films of the first decade were often in a social realist vein, repeatedly depicting the fate of women. Since the seventies, portraits of artists became one of his speciality. Many of his films were autobiographical, beginning with his 1951 directorial debut, Story of a Beloved Wife. Being born in Hiroshima Prefecture, he also made several films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the effect of nuclear weapons. Shindō was one of the pioneers of independent film production in Japan, co-founding his own film company Kindai Eiga Kyōkai with director Yoshimura and actor Taiji Tonoyama in 1950. He continued working as a screenwriter, director, and author until close to his death at the age of 100.
