FLM 138 — Five Great Films by Akira Kurosawa
Quarter: Spring
Instructor(s): Jonathan Crow
Date(s): Mar 31—May 12
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Tuesdays
Grade Restriction: No letter grade
Class Meeting Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Please Note: No class on April 14
Tuition: $350
Refund Deadline: Apr 2
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Spring
Day: Tuesdays
Duration: 6 weeks
Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Date(s): Mar 31—May 12
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $350
Refund Deadline: Apr 2
Instructor(s): Jonathan Crow
Grade Restriction: No letter grade
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Registration opens Feb 23, 8:30 am (PT)
Please Note: No class on April 14
Few directors in history left a body of work as varied, complex, and rich as Akira Kurosawa. Starting from his 1950 film Rashomon, which stunned the film world by winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first non-Western movie to do so, Kurosawa produced masterpiece after masterpiece—from the existential drama Ikiru to the samurai epic Seven Samurai to the Shakespearean adaptation Throne of Blood to the noir thriller High and Low. He took the cinematic language of Hollywood and improved on it, creating a vigorous, muscular method of visual storytelling that became a stylistic playbook for the likes of Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola. This course will cover Kurosawa's works during his most vital period. By the end of the course, students will come away with a deeper understanding of Kurosawa, Japanese cinema, and cinematic language.
All films can be rented or streamed through Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play Movies, or other online platforms.
JONATHAN CROW
Artist and Filmmaker
Jonathan Crow received an MFA in filmmaking from the California Institute of the Arts and an MA in Japanese studies from the University of Michigan. He has taught courses in film history, film arts, the history of cinematography, and Japanese cinema, and his articles have appeared in Open Culture and The Hollywood Reporter. He previously worked in the Hollywood film industry as a writer and editor before working as a film journalist at Yahoo Movies. Textbooks for this course:
(Optional) Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography (ISBN 978-0394714394)