Oguri: Muddy River - KarazwLaimoon

Cine Club: Wednesday 22 October 2014 (7 pm)

Title: Muddy River (Doro no Kawa)
Director: Kohei Oguri (Japan)
Released: 1981
Language: Japan (Eng S/T)
Duration: 1 hour and 44 min
Key Actors: Takahiro Tamura, Mariko, Kaga, Nobutaka Asahara

Interesting Links about the Film:
Trailer on YouTube: Click Here
IMDB Click Here
New York Times Click Here
Japan Society Click Here
Film Fanatic Click Here
Poached Click Here
Midnight Eye Click Here (Interview with Kohei Oguri)
Grunes Blog Click Here
Cinema Talk Click Here

Synopsis: (adapted from Michael Cacoyannis Click Here)
Osaka, 1956. The nine-year-old Nobuko lives with his father nearby the river. One day, the boy meets two siblings that live in a riverboat-brothel, while their mother is prostituting herself. Oguri’s film approaches with perspicacity the tough world of ordinary people: they are bound in the arena of subsistence and struggle for life, they are corrupted. Inside Nobuko’s gaze, we can see some reflections of the melancholic solitude of the childhood. In every scene, we can witness the open wound of the defeat, the frustration and resignation and the lost lives ready to be sacrificed on the altar of the reconstruction of postwar Japan.

Director: Kohei Oguri (adapted from Wikipedia Click Here)
Born in Gunma, Oguri first became a freelance assistant director after graduating from Waseda University. He made his directorial debut in 1981 with Muddy River, which earned him both a Japan Academy Prize for Director of the Year and a citation in the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award. Muddy River was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Silver Prize at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1985 he was a member of the jury at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival.

His film The Sting of Death won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. He has also authored several books.