Akira Kurosawa, Epic Grandeur

In the post-war period, Kurosawa established himself as one of the great names in cinema history and a leading figure of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. His cinema is epic in its narratives, the scale of its staging, and its existential depth – even when he sets aside the samurai to film his contemporaries. Without claiming to be exhaustive, this program revisits some of his greatest classics, particularly from his illustrious collaboration with actor Toshirō Mifune, portraits of humanity on the edge of flamboyance and darkness.