Akira Kurosawa

Birthday: 1910-03-23
Deathday: 1998-09-06
Birthplace: Shinagawa, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan
Gender: Male

Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明) was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (1943). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. Rashomon (1950), which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961) and High and Low (1963). After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive great acclaim. In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named Asian of the Century in the Arts, Literature, and Culture category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media.

Credits

Year Title
1993-04-17 Madadayo
1991-05-25 Rhapsody in August
1990-05-11 Dreams
1985-06-01 Ran
1980-04-26 Kagemusha
1975-08-02 Dersu Uzala
1971-08-31 Song of the Horse
1970-10-31 Dodes'ka-den
1965-04-03 Red Beard
1963-03-01 High and Low
1962-01-01 Sanjuro
1961-04-25 Yojimbo
1960-09-19 The Bad Sleep Well
1958-12-28 The Hidden Fortress
1957-10-01 The Lower Depths
1957-01-15 Throne of Blood
1955-11-22 I Live in Fear
1954-04-26 Seven Samurai
1952-10-09 Ikiru
1952-04-24 The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
1951-05-23 The Idiot
1950-08-26 Rashomon
1950-04-26 Scandal
1949-10-17 Stray Dog
1949-03-19 The Quiet Duel
1948-04-27 Drunken Angel
1947-07-01 One Wonderful Sunday
1946-10-29 No Regrets for Our Youth
1946-05-02 Those Who Make Tomorrow
1945-05-03 Sanshiro Sugata Part Two
1944-04-13 The Most Beautiful
1943-03-25 Sanshiro Sugata