Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was a notorious Japanese film-maker, and is considered one of the most important directors in the history of film, given his important contributions not only to Japanese cinema, but to the entire film industry. Kurosawa grew up in the suburbs of Tokyo, and was the youngest of eight children of a middle class family. From an early age his inclination to the artistic world was clear, and did his first works as a painter; even though he hasn’t pursued a career in painting, Kurosawa took advantage of a lot of the knowledge and experience he gained in this areas, and applied them to his films, which is especially notorious in the very specific aesthetic that characterizes his work.
In 1935, Akira Kurosawa started his career in the film industry, as an assistant director, and he worked in dozens of films, which helped him acquire knowledge and experience that he would later apply as a director.
The first film directed by Kurosawa, “Sanshiro Sugata”, premiered in 1943, and was followed by many others, in a total of 30 movies, among which the well-known “Shichinin no samurai” (“Seven Samurai”), from 1954, or “Ran”, from 1985, which gave him a nomination for the Oscar of Best Director in the same year. Five years later, in 1990, he won an Oscar Honorary Award for his cinematic accomplishments.
Akira Kurosawa was also one of the first to introduce and popularize the “chanbara”, which refers to movies about samurai, being this the most common genre in all its filmography.
Kurosawa had a very distinct form of directing, in which he combined the traditional Japanese imagery, perceptions and philosophy to the soviet editing techniques and the classic action and narrative style, having created an unprecedented and unmistakable visual language that marks all his films, and that is still considered a landmark in the history of film.
