17th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 29 - Jul 15, 2018

Photo: © 2017 Sekigahara Film Partners

New York Premiere

Sekigahara

関ヶ原

This sweeping epic delves into Japanese history’s bloodiest battle, fought on a single day in 1600 with losses of 30,000 men and women. Sekigahara teems with an assortment of historical characters and enough Machiavellian maneuvering and exciting ninja action for an entire miniseries. But the focus is resolutely on the motives and strategies of the two towering figures whose forces would meet for the final showdown: Ishida Mitsunari and Tokugawa Ieyasu (a scheming Yakusho Koji). Harada's powerful, Kurosawa-like reinterpretation completely overturns the conventional understanding of their motives, transforming their fateful conflict into a war between justice and political opportunism.

Director: Harada Masato
Cast: Yakusho Koji, Higashide Masahiro, Hira Takehiro, Arimura Kasumi, Okada Junichi
Languages: Japanese with English subtitles
2017; 149 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Saturday June 30, 5:00pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

Q&A with director Harada Masato, who will receive the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award

Lifetime Achievement Award
Harada Masato
原田眞人

Harada Masato studied filmmaking in London and worked as a film critic in Hollywood before he made his 1979 directorial debut Goodbye Flickmania, an homage to Howard Hawks. He made several films in the US including sci-fi cult hit Gunhed (1989) and Painted Desert (1993) before returning to Japan to make Kamikaze Taxi (1994), his first collaboration with Yakusho Koji and his first modern classic. He is a master storyteller in the tradition of Kurosawa Akira who brings an always sharp blade to his explorations of history, social injustice, political corruption, and the weak foundations of Japanese democracy.