Wim Wenders - Tokyo-Ga (1985)

A film study of modern Japan coupled to director Wim Wenders' quest to gain an understanding of one of his film idols - Yasujiro Ozu. The programme also features interviews with Ozu's cameraman, and fellow filmmaker Werner Herzog. The film starts and finishes with a scene from Tokyo Story.




Wim Wenders travels to Japan in search of the Tokyo seen in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu's own _Tokyo monogatari (1953)_ is a helpful (but not mandatory) pre-requisite to seeing Tokyo-Ga (1985). (http://imdb.com/title/tt0090182/plotsummary)





Director Wim Wenders travels to Japan in search of the world of his idol, the Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. He strives to reconcile the contemporary Japan he experiences with the Japan of Ozu's films in this very personal video diary. Filmmakers Werner Herzog and Chris Marker offer insights.




Wim Wenders says, "If in our century something sacred still existed… if there were something like a sacred treasure of the cinema, then for me that would have to be the work of the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. He made fifty-four films. Silent films in the Twenties, black-and-white films in the Thirties and Forties, and finally colour films until his death on December 12th, 1963, on his sixtieth birthday.




As thoroughly Japanese as they are, these films are, at the same time, universal. In them, I've been able to recognize all families, in all the countries of the world, as well as my parents, my brother and myself. For me, never before and never again since has the cinema been so close to its essence and its purpose: to present an image of man in our century, a usable, true and valid image, in which he not only recognizes himself but from which, above all, he may learn about himself. Ozu's work does not need my praise and such a sacred treasure of the cinema could only reside in the realm of the imagination. And so, my trip to Tokyo was in no way a pilgrimage. I was curious as to whether I still could track down something from this time, whether there was still anything left of this work. Images perhaps, or even people… Or whether so much would have changed in Tokyo in the twenty years since Ozu's death that nothing would be left to find.