Monday, December 3, 2007

Sunday, December 9

UWM Union Theater
5pm
Utamaro and his Five Women
(Utamaro O Meguru Gonin no Onna, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 87 min., 1946)



A fictionalized account of revolutionary Japanese print artist Kitagawa Utamaro and those who surrounded him, his artwork was considered shocking in 18th century feudal Japan , and in Mizoguchi's film he attracts both admiration from his peers and condemnation from the Shogunate. Utamaro and his Five Women opens with a sweeping, long take of a procession of the very people Utamaro loved to paint, a scene as vividly realized and affective as the artist's own work. Utamaro and his followers find themselves in a string of duplicitous romantic encounters. During a time when both art and emotion are heavily censored the characters lash out, resorting to selfish acts of self-expression that lead to irreversible, devastating consequences.

7pm
Life of Oharu
(Saikaku Ichidai Onna, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 144 min, 1952)