I had first seen 'Rashomon' as a student in Delhi in the 1970s. It was the year Akira Kurosawa and Michelangelo Antonioni had come visiting the Indian Film Festival in Delhi and all of Kurosawa's films were being screened at the festival venues across the city. The tickets were expensive, or so they seemed to me as a student, I bought the cheapest ones, and saw the film in widescreen straining my neck on the first row of a cinema hall.
I had heard of 'Rashomon' before I saw it: my father had seen it in Meerut. I can't remember now how it had reached Meerut in the 1950's but it had and my father had seen and loved the movie. So I was aware of the cult of Rashomon and Kurosawa by the time I grew up and actually saw the film.
Like most people who have had the chance to see 'Rashomon', my mind blew up when I saw the movie. It's a film that opens your mind about what is possible in cinema,inspires you as a filmmaker.
Years later, Rashomon continued to intrude upon my life.
In Nairobi, in the year 2009, my son was in University and brought home a book of Japanese short stories. Can't remember the name of the author but the book did state that Rashomon was actually a combination of two short stories from this collection. The story of the three men stuck in the rain is one story and the court case was a second story. Kurosawa had combined them in his masterly screenplay.
Now, here I was showing Rashomon to my students, only to find that my copy had no subtitles in English.
So here were my students, reasonably intelligent young people, hence reasonably ill informed about cinema, stuck with a film made in 1952, in black and white, in Japanese; on a summer afternoon in a hot room with a non functioning AC. I was holding my breath, would the magic of Akira Kurosawa hold?
In retrospect I need not have worried, Kurosawa's magic had my students in awe. They had their eyes popping out by the time the screening finished. They admitted they had never seen anything like it or indeed even imagined that such work existed. I thought of the Europeans who had been overawed by Kurosawa at the Venice Film Festival in 1952. Overnight Akira Kurosawa had become one of the emperors of cinema.
And here in a small Indian town, Kurosawa had done it again.
Honestly, I can't stop applauding the film...
PS: Rashomon is available for streaming on Youtube, in a version with English subtitles.
I had heard of 'Rashomon' before I saw it: my father had seen it in Meerut. I can't remember now how it had reached Meerut in the 1950's but it had and my father had seen and loved the movie. So I was aware of the cult of Rashomon and Kurosawa by the time I grew up and actually saw the film.
Like most people who have had the chance to see 'Rashomon', my mind blew up when I saw the movie. It's a film that opens your mind about what is possible in cinema,inspires you as a filmmaker.
Years later, Rashomon continued to intrude upon my life.
In Nairobi, in the year 2009, my son was in University and brought home a book of Japanese short stories. Can't remember the name of the author but the book did state that Rashomon was actually a combination of two short stories from this collection. The story of the three men stuck in the rain is one story and the court case was a second story. Kurosawa had combined them in his masterly screenplay.
Now, here I was showing Rashomon to my students, only to find that my copy had no subtitles in English.
So here were my students, reasonably intelligent young people, hence reasonably ill informed about cinema, stuck with a film made in 1952, in black and white, in Japanese; on a summer afternoon in a hot room with a non functioning AC. I was holding my breath, would the magic of Akira Kurosawa hold?
In retrospect I need not have worried, Kurosawa's magic had my students in awe. They had their eyes popping out by the time the screening finished. They admitted they had never seen anything like it or indeed even imagined that such work existed. I thought of the Europeans who had been overawed by Kurosawa at the Venice Film Festival in 1952. Overnight Akira Kurosawa had become one of the emperors of cinema.
And here in a small Indian town, Kurosawa had done it again.
Honestly, I can't stop applauding the film...
PS: Rashomon is available for streaming on Youtube, in a version with English subtitles.
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