this hole you put me in wasn’t deep enough

“In the 1950s, Japanese cinema enjoyed what is widely discussed as its second “golden age” – a period in which the country’s filmic output was considered among the best in the world. This was a time when directors like Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon), Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu) and Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri) were winning top awards in Europe. Japanese genre classics were transforming the shape of Hollywood – as Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress were soon-to-be adapted to create The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars and Star Wars in the West. And as Godzilla was born out of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Yasujirō Ozu (Tokyo Story) was creating gentle cinematic works that are today admired as some of the greatest of all time.

But while the stars of the screen were both male and female, the influential figures behind the cameras were predominantly men; the effect of a deeply patriarchal society historically bound by tradition. Most discussions of this deeply influential period of global cinema, in fact, will have little to say about female filmmaking at all – there were so few figures consistently working in the field. It was not until a young Naomi Kawase (Suzaku) won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 1997 that women filmmakers of Japan truly found sustained recognition overseas.

Much-welcomed, then, is the BFI’s latest film season, in collaboration with Edinburgh Film Festival (EIFF) and Janus Films. Titled Kinuyo Tanaka: A Life in Film, it explores the outstanding works of one of the country’s first-ever female auteurs – whose incredible and under-seen films have been newly restored in 4K. A screen icon in her own right (highlights from her incredible acting career, including collaborations with nearly all of the aforementioned filmmaking giants, are to be shown in September), Tanaka defied the male gatekeepers of the industry to carve out her own career behind the camera. She thrived in the process, delivering works that matched those of her male counterparts and often surpassed them.