In Vancouver, British Columbia, The Cinematheque is presenting
KUROSAWA AKIRA RESTORED
From September 15 – November 2, 2025
The programme reads:
“The influence of Kurosawa Akira (1910–1998), one of cinema’s paramount figures, has remained outsized and evergreen some seventy-five years after Rashomon effectively introduced the West to Japanese film. While various mid-century directors have watched their cachet dwindle over the decades, Kurosawa’s has held exceptionally strong, unruffled by the shifting winds of appreciation. His name-making masterpieces of the 1950s, Seven Samurai and the aforementioned Rashomon, for instance, each fortified their standing amid the top 50 films of all time in Sight and Sound’s latest decennial poll. Seven Samurai was anointed the greatest ever foreign-language (i.e. non-English) film by balloters of a 2018 BBC poll—three other Kurosawa pictures cracked the upper 80—while Spike Lee’s 2025 transplanting of High and Low to modern-day NYC proves the storied tradition of making over Kurosawa for Western markets hasn’t lost its appeal or potential for greatness. (Among the most famous, The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars, and, yes, Star Wars.)
Accounting for the enduring popularity of Kurosawa is a game of pie-chart percentages. How big a portion should be calculated for his unparalleled craft, his cross-cultural touchstones (Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, John Ford, Dashiell Hammet), his virtuosic reinvention of the chambara (sword fighting) genre, his legendary Mifune Toshiro collaborations—heck, the abiding high-regard for Japanese cinema, tout court?! What requires less speculation is the knowledge that, thanks to the efforts of studio Toho and distributor Janus Films, Kurosawa’s legacy is keeping pace with the times.
Following the release of a restored Seven Samurai last year (a sensation here at The Cinematheque), eight more digitally refurbished Kurosawa films are now available. Two—Stray Dog and High and Low—we cherry-picked early to coincide with our summer noir series. The six others are presented in this “Restored” program, a collection of indispensable Kurosawa classics that, with the exception of humanist drama Ikiru, all draw from the director’s iconic jidaigeki (period piece) output and feature leading man Mifune at the apex of his formidable acting prowess.”
Click on the respective image above for more information on this series.
For all of the films scheduled this month at The Cinematheque, click on the theatre banner above.