Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2011

Legendary maverick director Seijun Suzuki will be honored with a retrospective at Cinema Vera (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku; www.cinemavera.com), November 19-December 16. Suzuki was a prolific studio director for Nikkatsu in the ’50s and ’60s, until he was called in as a last-minute replacement on the film Branded to Kill (1967; pictured). The director gave the characters in the stock yakuza flick odd obsessions ranging from dead butterflies to the smell of freshly boiled rice, and was fired and blacklisted for ten years after the resulting film was a financial flop. Suzuki then took the unprecedented step of suing the studio, making himself a counterculture icon. Today his early films are revered as absurdist masterpieces by the likes of Jim Jarmusch, John Woo and Quentin Tarantino… Shinjuku Musashinokan (3-27-10 Shinjuku; http://shinjuku.musashino-k.jp) is continuing its series of works from the American Film Renaissance with The Strawberry Statement (1970), a drama loosely based on the 1968 student protests at Columbia University. The film in turn inspired a popular song by Japanese singer Yumi Matsutoya…

Unless otherwise noted, Japanese films are shown without English subtitles and non-English language films are shown with only Japanese subtitles.