It’s safe to say that without Akira Kurosawa there would be no Cinema Dual. Of course, there also wouldn’t be Seven Samurai, but then again, without Seven Samurai there wouldn’t be Rebel Moon Part 1: Child of Fire or, at least, the terrible schlocky version I sat through the other night. So perhaps a bit of a mixed bag, but I think we can all agree that even if this site and podcast didn’t exist the good outweighs the bad, right?
For a director with so many certified classics as well as being the firmament upon which Jon and I built this little corner of the Internet you’d think we’d be more well versed in the man’s filmography. Sure, we can go on and on (and have) about the many, many classics in Kurosawa’s oeuvre, but stray away from the major works and our experience becomes a little more, well…blurry. And that’s a bit of a crime when you think about one of the original intents of both the podcast and the site, not to mention quasi-abandoned columns like Criterion Catch-Up (I promise I’ll get back to it): find and discover interesting films, and talk about them. So much of what I want to accomplish here is to expand my palate when it comes to films, and when we’ve dove into filmmakers I wasn’t as familiar with – Tarkovsky, Cassavetes, Edward Yang, and even the recent episode on Tati – I’ve gotten a glow that comes with the excitement of learning a new language, a new way to understand the world through someone else’s perspective, and it’s exhilerating.
And now that another year closes on us, I want to use the new one to return to an old master.
In all Kurosawa directed 30 films (we’re not counting 1946’s Those Who Make Tomorrow since that was co-directed with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajirō Yamamoto). And like Jon did with his Varda series, I want to tackle the filmography of the artist who was so pivotal in crafting my love of film.
But I don’t want to do it in a vacuum, so the plan is to tackle this together. Twice a month starting in January we’ll watch and write our impressions of a Kurosawa film, starting with 1943’s Sanshiro Sugata and moving chronologically until we hit 1993’s Madadayo. I don’t want to get bogged down in normal reviews (otherwise I fear I’ll abandon this like so many other projects), so we’re going to keep it easy, sharing and discussing our opinions with a opportunity to respond to each other in writing. Maybe we’ll mention it in our normal podcast; maybe we won’t. The important piece is really just watching the films and digging deeper into one of our favorite filmmakers.
I hope you join us. We’re looking at the 15th and 30th of each month to get a little closer to the works of Akira Kurosawa, and it would be great to have you along for the ride.
Cinema Dual 
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