Film/Video JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1999, $6 ($4 WALKER MEMBERS) ADMITS TO BOTH SHOWS AUDITORIUM

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (SEISHUN ZANKOKO MONOGATARI)
DIRECTED BY NAGISA OSHIMA
7 PM
Oshima's revolutionary film, a cardinal work of the Japanese New Wave, made him, according to critic Tadao Sato, "the darling of the age." Cruel, beautiful, distressing, the film centers on a young couple who declare, "We have no dreams, so we won't see them destroyed." Emblems of the alienated youth culture that was emerging in Japan, the two lounge in sleazy bars, make love in brackish industrial backwaters, and roar through Tokyo on a motorcycle, attempting to achieve total freedom. Oshima's innovative use of hand-held camera and decentered CinemaScope compositions makes for a vertiginous visual experience that reflects the unmoored quality of his characters' lives. 1960, Japan, 96 minutes.

DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF (SHINJUKU DOROBO NIKKI)
DIRECTED BY NAGISA OSHIMA
8:45 PM
As the title suggests, Oshima's epochal film is modeled partly on Genet's The Thief's Journal. A brilliantly insightful and provocative work, Diary interweaves a Godardian look at Shinjuku, Tokyo's center of student politics and avant-garde culture, with a narrative about a disaffected young woman who falls into an affair with a violent, moody book thief. A paternal bookstore owner takes the couple under his wing and sends them to a sex counselor. By turns funny, moving, and alarming, Oshima's portrait of post-1968 sex and politics in Tokyo takes its place with such films as Godard's Weekend as a document of its time. 1969, Japan, 94 minutes.