At this special evening of recollection and conversation, Donald Richie discusses Japan and his insights into Japanese culture and especially Japanese film with Tom Luddy, co-founder and current co-director of the Telluride Film Festival and an executive and film producer with American Zoetrope.
Praised by critics from Susan Sontag to Tom Wolfe, Richie is the foremost writer on Japanese culture in English. Born in Ohio in 1924, he has lived in Japan since 1947, except for time at Columbia University in the early 1950s and as curator of film at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1968–73.
The author of some thirty books and dozens of essays, Richie is especially well known for his instrumental role in introducing Japanese film to the West and for his travel memoir The Inland Sea, which was adapted into a popular PBS documentary.
In addition to The Inland Sea, his books published by Berkeley-based Stone Bridge Press include Travels in the East, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, The Donald Richie Reader, and The Japan Journals.
He recently wrote the forewords to A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors by Alexander Jacoby, and Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa by Teruyo Nogami. Richie is also an experimental filmmaker. In 1988, he was invited to be the first guest director at the Telluride Film Festival.
Bio
Tom Luddy
While a student at Berkeley, Tom Luddy operated several film societies. Later in his career, he worked on restoring films which led to a producing career.
Luddy began his professional career working for the NYC-based Brandon Films distributing foreign films. He returned to Berkeley in 1972 and spent the next five years as program director of the Pacific Film Archives. In 1979, he moved over to Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios as director of special projects
Donald Richie
Donald Richie is the foremost writer on Japanese culture in English. Born in Ohio in 1924, he has lived in Japan since 1947, except for time at Columbia University in the early 1950s and as curator of film at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1968–73.
The author of some thirty books and dozens of essays, Richie is especially well known for his instrumental role in introducing Japanese film to the West and for his travel memoir The Inland Sea, which was adapted into a popular PBS documentary.
He recently wrote the forewords to A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors by Alexander Jacoby, and Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa by Teruyo Nogami.
Richie is also an experimental filmmaker. In 1988, he was invited to be the first guest director at the Telluride Film Festival.
(born March 23, 1910, Tokyo, Japan—died Sept. 6, 1998, Tokyo) Japanese film director. He studied painting before becoming an assistant director and scenarist at PCL (later Toho) movie studio (1936–43). He wrote and directed his first feature film, Sanshiro Sugata, in 1943, won notice with Drunken Angel (1948), starring Mifune Toshiro, and was internationally acclaimed for Rashomon (1950). His later classic films include Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961), Kagemusha (1980), and Ran (1985). His ability to combine Japanese aesthetic and cultural elements with a Western sense of action and drama made him, in Western eyes, the foremost Japanese filmmaker.
Some interesting observations that barely scratch the surface. I find it noteworthy that he entirely dismisses anime and most of the modern genre directors.
My favorite of hi comments about Ozu's famous MU symbol on his grave site. It is reported as some sort of holy ground and given great signifigance in other places and yet Ritchie says it was put there by the meddling grave diggers and not in step with Ozu. I take it in the IF YOU SEE THE BUDDAH ALONG THE ROAD KILL HIM vein. Do not get caught up in labeling or making something that is living "our memory of Ozu" something that is dead...Ozu's gravesite.
Hirokazu Kore-Eda is an amazing director. His film 'After Life' is one of my all-time favorites. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165078/">Here's the IMDB link.</a>
member. 
