Nobuo Nakamura, Ryuji Kita, and Shin Saburi play a trio of matchmaking yentas in Ozu’s LATE AUTUMN
LATE AUTUMN (AKIBIYORI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1960)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, June 25, 1:00, 3:20, 8:00
Series runs through June 27
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Yasujirō Ozu revisits one of his greatest triumphs, 1949’s Late Spring, in the 1960 drama Late Autumn, the Japanese auteur’s fourth color film and his third-to-last work. Whereas the black-and-white Late Spring is about a widowed father (Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried adult daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplating their futures, Late Autumn deals with young widow Akiko Miwa (Hara again) and her daughter, Ayako (Yoku Tsukasa). At a ceremony honoring the seventh anniversary of Mr. Miwa’s death, several of his old friends gather together and are soon plotting to marry off both the younger Akiko, whom they all had crushes on, and twenty-four-year-old Ayako. The three businessmen — Soichi Mamiya (Shin Saburi), Shuzo Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), and Seiichiro Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) — serve as a kind of comedic Greek chorus, matchmaking and arguing like a trio of yentas, while Akiko and Ayako maintain creepy smiles as the men lay out their misguided, unwelcome plans. Mamiya makes numerous attempts to fix Ayako up with one of his employees, Shotaru Goto (Keiji Sada), but Ayako wants none of it, preferring the freedom and independence displayed by her best friend, Yoko (Yuriko Tashiro), who represents the new generation in Japan. At the same time, their matchmaking for Akiko borders on the slapstick. Based on a story by Ton Satomi, Late Autumn, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, is a relatively lighthearted film from the master, with sly jokes and playful references while examining a Japan that is in the midst of significant societal change in the postwar era. Kojun Saitô’s Hollywood-esque score is often bombastically melodramatic, but Yuuharu Atsuta’s cinematography keeps things well grounded with Ozu’s trademark low-angle, unmoving shots amid carefully designed interior sets. Late Autumn is downright fun to watch, and you can see it on June 25 at Film Forum as part of its three-week Ozu series, which continues through June 27 with screenings of such other works as An Autumn Afternoon, That Night’s Wife, the double feature A Hen in the Wind and Ohayo, and Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? In addition, on June 26 at 11:00 am, Film Forum will host a free memorial tribute to Japanese cinema expert, critic, director, and curator Donald Richie, who died in Tokyo in February at the age of eighty-eight; speakers include Ian Buruma, Daryl Chin, Emilie de Brigard, Lucille Carra, Bruce Goldstein, Peter Grilli, Laurence Kardish, Stephen Prince, Mary Richie, and Paul Schrader. (Late Autumn will be having encore screenings July 24-25 as part of Film Forum’s “Reprise Presentation” of eight of the films through July 25.)
Ever since he was a boy growing up on a farm in South Carolina, Isaiah Owens, the son of a sharecropper, has been burying the dead, beginning with small animals. As a teenager, he moved to New York City to train to become a funeral director, and for the last forty years, he has run the Owens Funeral Home in Harlem, where he continues to be a longtime pillar of the community, known for the great care and consideration he gives each family as they deal with the loss of a loved one. His company motto is “Where Beauty Softens Your Grief,” and that is evident throughout Christine Turner’s new documentary, Homegoings. Turner followed Owens over the course of four years as he and his staff — his wife, son, daughter, and mother all work in the family business — set up funerals for such clients as Walter Simons, whose octogenarian grandparents died within two days of each other; Queen Petra’s children, who want something special for their mother, including a horse and carriage; and Linda “Redd” Williams-Miller, who is planning her funeral in advance, wanting to get every detail right. And details are what Owens is all about, not only working hard to make sure the deceased look their best in their coffin but guaranteeing that every aspect of the funeral is handled with great thought and humanity. Owens narrates the documentary, sharing his views on life and death as well as the history of mourning in the African-American community. He is an inspiring man who is not what most people expect in funeral directors, who are often portrayed as being dark and morose. Williams-Miller says that homegoings should be “a happy occasion,” and Owens is ready, willing, and able to ensure that the experience is precisely what each individual family wants and needs. Homegoings, which was made in conjunction with PBS’s POV program and features an original score by Daniel Bernard Roumain, is having its U.S. theatrical premiere June 24-30 at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem, not very far from the Owens Funeral Home itself, as part of guest curator Livia Bloom’s continuing “Documentary in Bloom” series. The hour-long film will be preceded by StoryCorps Shorts: A Tenth Anniversary Program, a twenty-minute collection of animations the Rauch Brothers have made with the organization that has been amassing an oral history of America for a decade. The June 25 and 28 screenings of Homegoings will be followed by a Q&A with Turner and members of the cast, with a reception as well on June 28.
While postwar modern art was exploding in New York in the 1950s, a small, close-knit group of artists were coming together in Los Angeles, exploring abstract expressionism in a tiny gallery called Ferus. Mixing archival footage with new interviews — shot in black and white to maintain the old-time, DIY feel — director Morgan Neville delves into the fascinating world of the L.A. art scene as seen through the Ferus Gallery, which was founded in 1957 by Walter Hopps, a medical-school dropout who looked and acted like a Fed, and assemblage artist Ed Kienholz. “The work was really special,” notes Dennis Hopper, enjoying a cigar with Dean Stockwell. “And there [were] a lot of really, really gifted artists that really have to be looked at again.” Among those artists were Wallace Berman, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John Baldessari, and Larry Bell. (All of them participate in the documentary except for Berman, who died in 1976.) In addition to featuring up-and-coming West Coast painters, sculptors, and conceptual artists, Ferus also hosted a Marcel Duchamp retrospective as well as early shows by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and other East Coast favorites. For nearly ten years, Hopps, Kienholz, and crafty businessman Irwin Blum kept Ferus going until various personality clashes led to its demise. The film includes an engaging roundtable from 2004 in which Neville brought many of the artists together to discuss what Ferus meant to them — and the art world in general. Behind a jazzy score, Neville also speaks with collectors, curators, and critics, putting it all into perspective. The Cool School, narrated by actor and photographer Jeff Bridges, is a fun-filled trip through a heretofore little-known part of postwar American art. The film is screening June 23 at 11:15 am as part of the Nitehawk Cinema’s monthly series “Art Seen” along with Paul McCarthy’s The Black and White Tapes, artist works by Kelly Kleinschrodt and Alexa Garrity, and Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s brilliant video bio A Brief History of John Baldessari, narrated by Tom Waits. The series continues July 20-21 with Neil Berkeley’s Beauty Is Embarrassing.
French writer-director Léos Carax (
Wes Anderson’s Rushmore is a dazzlingly dark, sublime masterpiece. Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom) created one of the all-time-great quirky indie antiheroes in Max Fischer, played with relish by Jason Schwartzman. Max is a troubled genius at the private Rushmore Academy, where his eccentricities make him somewhat of an outcast. His best friend is wealthy iconoclast Herman Blume (Bill Murray in a career-redefining role), but their relationship turns sour when it becomes apparent that they both have their hearts set on beautiful teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). A unique take on disaffected youth, Rushmore, which also features such Anderson regulars as Luke Wilson and Seymour Cassel and was cowritten by Owen Wilson, helped launch a new wave of American independent cinema with its offbeat narrative and eclectic soundtrack, which includes songs by Donovan, the Rolling Stones, Django Reinhardt, Cat Stevens, Yves Montand, and the Faces, along with original material by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh. Rushmore is screening June 20 as part of the free Films in Tompkins programming in Tompkins Square Park and will be preceded by a live performance by the all-women’s AfroBrazilian Samba Reggae drumming band BatalaNYC. The summer series continues into August with such other fab films as Reservoir Dogs (with Amour Obscur), Easy Rider (with Main Street Quintet), The Big Lebowski (with Jade Pinto and the Yeahtones), and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which was rescheduled for August 22 after getting rained out on June 13.