100th Birthday Of Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. In a career that spanned 57 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential of all filmmakers. In 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement “for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.”

The legendary Japanese film-maker would’ve been 100 today. We look at the tributes paid to his genius by other great directors:

1. Jaws and E.T director Steven Spielberg once called Kurosawa “the pictorial Shakespeare of our time”.

2. Despite only seeing one of Kurosawa’s films, Seven Samurai, Italian director Federico Fellini described him as “the greatest living example of what an author of the cinema should be.”

3. Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci said of the Japanese film-maker: “Kurosawa’s movies and La Dolce Vita, Fellini, are the things that pushed me, sucked into being a film director.”

4. American director Sidney Lumet said: “Kurosawa never affected me directly in terms of my own movie-making because I never would have presumed that I was capable of that perception and that vision.”

5. American film-maker Sam Peckinpah said: “I’d like to be able to make a Western like Kurosawa makes Westerns.”

Personally I am a huge fan, only seen a few of his works but enjoyed them all the same. Next film of his I plan to see? Hmm… Either The Bad Sleep Well or I Live In Fear!