Updated February 27
In this excerpt from The Story of Film, Mark Cousins, Donald Richie and Kyōko Kagawa discuss the life and films of the sublime Yasujiro Ozu.
What interests you about Donald Richie?Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear of the death, at the grand old age of 88, of the preeminent English-language scholar of Japanese cinema and culture Donald Richie.
He's like my Uncle Boonmee. I think that he embodies a lot of memories about cinema, and if I work with him I almost have an excuse to research and get to know the generation of Kurosawa and Miziguchi, etc. He also lived through that time and saw the change of Japan, and I'd like to know that because it's such a fascinating country with great literature and cinema. I've only worked in Thailand, so if there's a country I want to step out and "know," it's Japan. [Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 'Interview', indieWire, May 17, 2011]
Richie, author of more than thirty books (including Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character, A Lateral View, Travels in the East, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, The Donald Richie Reader, and The Japan Journals) was one of the must-reads of our generation but was also an experimental filmmaker of huge note, too -- see his 1968 film Five Philosophical Fables here for an example. This was one of the reasons why Apichatpong Weerasethakul (a filmmaker Richie considered to be "the new Kurosawa") was hoping to work with him - sadly, due to Donald Richie's ill health in recent years, it seems likely this intriguing collaboration did not take place.
Richie's work has featured many times over the years here at FSFF, so as well as celebrating the brilliant film studies content he produced, this blog also gives sincere thanks for his amazing scholarly generosity, placing much of his work online and in the public domain.
Key posthumous tributes to Donald Richie
- David Bordwell, 'Donald Richie', Observations on Film Art, February 25, 2013
- Peter Cowie, 'Remembering Donald Richie', Criterion Collection, February 22, 2013
- Kim Hendrickson, 'Donal Richie (1924-2013)', Criterion Collection, February 19, 2013
- Karen Severns, Donald Richie Tributes website
Online works by Donald Richie
- Donald Richie, Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character (New York: Anchor Books, 1961; Michigan Electronic Reprint 2004)
- Donald Richie, 'In the Realm of the Senses: Some Notes on Oshima and Pornography', Criterion Film Essays, April 30, 2009
- Donald Richie, 'Remembering Kurosawa', Criterion Collection, December 9, 2009
- Donald Richie, 'Ikuru', Criterion Collection, January 5, 2004
- Donald Richie, ' Stories of Floating Weeds', Criterion Collection, April 19, 2004
- Donald Richie, 'Dersu Uzala', Criterion Collection, July 17, 1995
- Donald Richie, 'Tokyo Journal: Remembering Toshiro Mifune', Criterion Collection, September 30, 2008
- Donald Richie, 'Ozu and Setsuko Hara', Criterion Collection, May 8, 2006
- Donald Richie, 'Samurai Rebellion: Kobayashi's Rebellion', Criterion Collection, October 24, 2005
- Donald Richie, 'Red Beard', Criterion Collection, November 19, 1989
- Donald Richie, 'Expressionism in Film', Tokyo - Berlin / Berlin - Tokyo Exhibition Catalogue, Mori Art Museum, 2006
- Donald Richie, 'The Daughter of the Samurai: a German-Japanese co-production', Tokyo - Berlin / Berlin - Tokyo Exhibition Catalogue, Mori Art Museum, 2006
- Donald Richie, writer and film critic, Conversations With History: "Writing, Film, and Japan: An Expatriate's View," 9/21/01
- Japan Times archive of work by Richie
- Donald Richie on Midnight Eye - Visions of Japanese cinema
- Alexander Jacoby, 'Donald Richie: A lifetime's observations of Japan', The Asi-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, August 2006
- Moving Image Source Interview, October 2006
- Richard Lloyd Parry, 'Smilingly Excluded [Review of The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 by Donald Richie]', London Review of Books, 28.16, August 2006
- Jasper Sharp, 'Inteview with Donald Richie', Midnight Eye, December 8, 2003
- A letter Hollis Frampton wrote in 1973 to Donald Richie, then the Film Curator at MoMA
- David Bordwell, 'Kurosawa's Early Spring', Observations on Film Art, December 8, 2009
- Catherine Grant, 'On Japanese Cinema', Film Studies For Free, July 27, 2010
- On Japanese Cinema
- Emperor of the Senses: RIP Nagisa Oshima 1932-2013
- Nagisa Oshima (1932-2013), a Tribute by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
- On Kazuo Hara and Japanese Documentary Film
- Reassessing Anime: Japanese cinema and animation
- Animation Studies: Three Fabulous Online Resources
- Horror Ad-Nauseam!
- War, Conflict and Commemoration in the Age of Digital Reproduction
- Dreaming Movies: RIP Satoshi Kon (1963-2010)
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