A radical thinker, mischievous, a blend of irony and magic, and at heart ever a teenager - Master Seijun Suzuki is a film maker who, in the course of a frenzied career, set forth in quest of formulas to break with conventional narrative. Suzuki is one of the exponents of the Japanese Nouvelle Vague, a trend in the sixties under the spell of the original French movement with Godard, Truffaut, and those close to them.

     In essence, bold film makers such as Suzuki and Oshima sought a way out for the oppressive Japanese concept of film making for the great studios who insisted on regarding film makers under contract as mere employees, not as authors. Seijun Suzuki, especially, was artful in his process of film making. In his films, he would subvert a narrative of action and eroticism without departing from the guidelines imposed by the bureaucracy of the studios - comparable to what Carlos Reichenbach and other São Paulo film makers of the Boca do Lixo Trash Movement did in the seventies, with philosophical and political messages in popular productions on an erotic theme - resulting in a long drawn-out struggle with producers who insisted they could not understand his films. A heretic, sacred and profane, oniric, licentious, sarcastic, and, above all, a trespasser, Suzuki's bold film-making broke with convention, invariably with an element of surprise, especially now, for spectators far off because of the time at which each of his films was made. The 23rd Mostra, with the contribution of the Japan Foundation, the enthusiasm of Carlos Reichenbach, and the indispensable assistance of Lúcia Nagib, is privileged to present a retrospective of the controversial films by Seijun Suzuki. In his films, we shall be witness to vigorous demolishment of symbols and values, a break with convention, brave cinema that proves modern even when he resorts to tradition and ceremonial to criticize his beloved Japan, given over to the passing whims of the West. (Leon Cakoff)

   SEIJUN SUZUKI

     
    Born in Tokyo, in 1923. Recruited into the imperial army in 1943, he left the country for Taiwan and the Philippines. On his return to Japan in 1946, he attended a course in cinema in Kamakura. The choice of a profession as film maker was almost by chance, after he failed college entrance exams into the university. In 1948, he was contracted by Shochiku as assistant director and worked first with Minora Shibuya and, subsequently, with Tsuruo Iwama.

     In 1954, he transferred to Nikkatsu film producers, still as Assistant. In 1956, he finally became a director, at first under the pseudonym Seitaro Suzuki. For eleven years, he made films exclusively for Nikkatsu who looked on him as a good "commercial" director, until he became an idol to students and intellectuals with his personal style, a blend of the absurd and of black humor, with his parodies on the yazuka mode of film. In 1967, his film Branded to Kill precipitated a scandal at Nikkatsu, and Suzuki was branded "incomprehensible" to the public. He was dismissed and filed suit against the company in a case that extended until 1976. He won the case, but was for almost ten years, unable to film. During this time, he worked for television and wrote books, meanwhile endeavoring to raise funds for his films in other film producers. He returned to cinema with A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness, in 1977. Zigeunerweisen from 1980 ushered in the plastic sophistication that characterizes his present-day work

(from the book Em Torno da Nouvelle Vague Japonesa, Editora Unicamp, by Lúcia Nagib).