About

The Australian Cinémathèque is proud to present a retrospective of films by Masaki Kobayashi with the generous support of the Japan Foundation. Kobayashi's beautifully crafted films question injustice, tradition and authority. Working from the 1950s to the 1980s, Kobayashi embarked on a filmmaking career after his conscription as a solider and subsequent time as a prisoner of war. At the time, cinema was at the forefront of cultural dissent in postwar and post-occupied Japan and many of Kobayashi's films are allegorical, examining contemporary social themes through genre.

Included in this program is Kobayashi's monumental anti-war trilogy The Human Condition 1959 – 1961 which examines the recurrent themes dearest to the filmmaker: injustice, systemic corruption, resistance to totalitarian authority and their influence on individual lives. While the film's source material is the popular six volume novel by Junpei Gomikawa, The Human Condition also draws from Kobayashi's own military experience and account of wartime.