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When Drive My Car won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2022, on top of being the first Japanese film ever nominated for Best Picture, it may have appeared to many as if its director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, had come out of nowhere to accomplish such a feat. Still others may have known him as the director of the four-hour tour-de-force relationship drama, Happy Hour, when it generated cinephile buzz on the festival circuit in 2016 or perhaps the spellbinding romance-by-way-of identity-crisis, Asako I & II, when it became his first film to premiere at Cannes in 2018. But well before these milestones, Hamaguchi was busy making shorts and features that have rarely screened outside of Japan. After graduating from Tokyo University in 2003 under the influence of John Cassavetes, Hamaguchi began directing in earnest before entering Tokyo University of the Arts where Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) became a mentor. As a student and beyond, Hamaguchi took advantage of a network of non-profit, institutional support to workshop projects that allowed him to experiment with like-minded actors, screenwriters and cinematographers. Indeed, a number of his films from this period (Intimacies, Touching the Skin of Eeriness) foreground the creative process as elements of his sublimely structured mid-career style come into view. With his latest film, All of a Sudden, in theaters this November, the Archive is pleased to present this selection of early works by Hamaguchi that confirm what was to come even as they defy expectations.
Series programmed and notes written by Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm.
