Japan Society Completes Nikkatsu Series With Hasebe’s Yakuza Film for the First Time With English Subtitles

For Immediate Release

Roughneck (1969)

Friday May 2, 7:30pm at Japan Society

New York, NY-- Offering New York City filmgoers their first opportunity to view famed Nikkatsu Studio classics with English subtitles, Japan Society's Film Program presents the Monthly Classics series NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema, curated by noted author and critic Mark Schilling (The Japan Times and Variety). Following screenings every month since September 2007, the series culminates Friday, May 2, 7:30 pm with a one-time-only presentation of Yasuharu Hasebe’s Roughneck (Arakure).

Roughneck (Arakure)
Friday May 2, 7:30pm
1969, 86 min., 35mm, color. Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. With Akira Kobayashi, Masako Izumi, Tatsuya Fuji.

Reckless troublemaker Yuji (Akira Kobayashi) takes up with a hot springs geisha, the lover of a local boss, roping him and his younger gang brother into a bloody battle with a rival gang. Kobayashi’s character prefigures the even-dirtier yakuza heroes in Kinji Fukasaku’s Toei films of the early seventies, beginning with Bunta Sugawara's mad dog gangster in the seminal Street Mobster (1972). In Roughneck, Kobayashi shines as the charismatic antihero, in this film that combines the dramatized world of Nikkatsu Action, and the more somber depiction of an authentic yakuza film.

The inaugural Monthly Classics series NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema encompasses 8 films never before screened in the U.S. from a genre long overlooked by foreign critics and audiences. "A liberating blast of hot cigarette smoke and cool, jet-set jazz" (The New York Sun), NO BORDER, NO LIMITS has presented Takashi Nomura's A Colt is My Passport, Koreyoshi Kurahara's The Warped Ones, Toshio Masuda's Like a Shooting Star, Red Handkerchief and Gangster VIP, Buichi Sato’s Plains Wanderer, and Koreyoshi Kurahara’s Glass Johnny. Yasuharu Hasebe's Roughneck completes the series Friday, May 2, 2008.

All films are in Japanese with new digital English subtitles. Prints are courtesy of Nikkatsu Corporation, except: The Warped Ones and Like a Shooting Star, prints courtesy of Nikkatsu Corporation with permission from Janus Films. Janus Films DVD giveaways of original Nikkatsu productions made possible by The Criterion Collection. NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema is co-organized by Outcast Cinema; a tour of other US and Canadian venues is planned for late 2007 into 2008.

About Nikkatsu Studios
Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest major film studio that nurtured the careers of directors such as Shohei Imamura and Seijun Suzuki, produced over 500 Nikkatsu Action genre films beginning in the mid-1950s, of which Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill may be the best known. For this series however, Schilling selects 8 films that go beyond Suzuki, broadening the Nikkatsu Action genre for American audiences.

Mark Schilling describes, “Nikkatsu Action films were a vivid reflection of the Westernization that was sweeping away old values in postwar Japan, while opening up new possibilities. They taught an entire generation a new, Japanese meaning of cool--with tough guy stars that had the swagger, moves and even long legs of Hollywood movie heroes, set in Japanese locales made to look like stand-ins for New York, Marseilles or the American West.”

About Mark Schilling
Author and critic Mark Schilling has lived in Tokyo since 1975. He began reviewing Japanese films for The Japan Times in 1989 and is currently the Japan correspondent for Variety. Schilling has written hundreds of articles on Japanese pop culture and film, contributing to Newsweek, Time, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Japan Quarterly, Cinemaya, Kinema Junpo and Eiga Geijutsu, while writing the books The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture, Contemporary Japanese Film and The Yakuza Movie Book - A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films. A program advisor to the Udine Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy since 2001, Schilling curated a retrospective of Nikkatsu Action films for the 2005 festival that was the first of its kind in the West. His latest book, published by FAB Press, is No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema.

About Outcast Cinema
Outcast Cinema is dedicated to the promulgation of disreputable Japanese movies. Its primary objective is to increase the recognition of lesser-known film artists and marginalized genres through theatrical screenings, the production of DVD supplements, and partnerships with US home video companies. For more information, contact info@outcastcinema.com.

About Japan Society's Film Program
Japan Society Film Program offers a diverse selection of Japanese films, from classics to contemporary independent productions. The Film Program has included retrospectives of seminal directors, thematic series and special screenings of international, U.S. and NY premieres. Several original film series curated by Japan Society have traveled to other U.S. venues in tours organized by the Film Program.

From its first film screening in 1922 (a four-reel film of the crown prince's 1921 visit to Europe) to its first ever large-scale film festival JAPAN CUTS in July 2007, Film Program highlights have also included, Kurosawa: A Retrospective (1981); A Tribute to Toshiro Mifune (1984); Anime: The History of Japanese Animated Films (1999); Critic’s Choice: Susan Sontag on Japanese Film, Parts I & II (2003 and 2004), and the premiere screening of Drawing Restraint 9, hosted by visual artist Matthew Barney and collaborator Björk (2006). Most recently, the Film Program presented the international premiere of Shall We Dance? and director Masayuki Suo’s I Just Didn’t Do It (2007).The Film Program has provided English subtitles for films which have never been screened outside of Japan. Accompanying lectures help place the films in their aesthetic and social contexts, and filmmakers often introduce and discuss their work.

About Japan Society
Founded in 1907 by prominent New York City business people and philanthropists, Japan Society has evolved over 100 years into an internationally recognized nonprofit organization presenting a full range of programs within arts and culture, business, education, and public policy. Through over 100 events annually, the Society creates rich encounters and exchanges that offer opportunities to experience Japanese culture; foster sustained and open dialogue on issues important to the U.S., Japan, and East Asia; and improve access to information on Japan.

Japan Society celebrates the 100th Anniversary of its founding with Japan100: Celebrating a Century, an unprecedented array of high-profile programming in 2007-08. The celebration occurs throughout New York City and in Japan with further national and international exposure through traveling exhibitions, performing arts tours, symposia, fellowships, and exchanges. Visit www.japan100.org for more information.

Tickets to the films of NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema are $10 general/$7 members and seniors/$4.50 students (first 20 tickets per screening, $7 thereafter). Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street, between First and Second Avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd Street-Grand Central Station or the E and V at Lexington Avenue and 53rd St.) For more information visit www.japansociety.org or call the box office at 212-715-1258.

The 2007-08 season of Japan Society’s Film Program is supported by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund. Monthly Classics is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. The Special Student Discount is made possible by the generous support of The Globus Family.

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For further information, images and screeners, please refer to:

Aya Akeura
Japan Society
T: 212-715-1292
F: (212) 715-1262
E: aakeura@japansociety.org

Kuniko Shiobara
Japan Society
T: 212-715-1249
F: (212) 715-1262
E: kshiobara@japansociety.org