The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema

Published January 2020


The Films of KORE-EDA Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema draws readers into the 13 feature films and documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director KORE-EDA Hirokazu. With his recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters, Kore-eda is arguably Japan’s greatest living director with an international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and compassionate eye.

The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese film scholar Linda C. Ehrlich perfectly complements the understated, yet powerful, tone of the films. From An Elemental Cinema, readers will gain a special understanding of Kore-eda’s filmsthrough a novel connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese traditional aesthetics.

An Elemental Cinema presents Kore-eda’s oeuvreas a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns, despite frequent generic experimentation. It also offers an example of how the poetics of cinema can be practiced in writing, as well as on the screen, and helps readers understand the films of this contemporary director as works of art that relate to their own lives.


1st ed. 2019, XX, 294 p. 68 illus.

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Linda C. Ehrlich

The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu

AnElementalCinema

Series:EastAsianPopularCulture

A unique examination of the films of award­winning Japanese director Kore­eda Hirokazu through the lens of a traditional Japanese appreciation of

Nature, and through the themes of liminality, trauma and recovery, and new configurations of family

A presentation of Kore­eda Hirokazu’s oeuvre as a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns, despite his frequent generic experimentation

A comprehensive analysis of Kore­eda Hirokazu’s first 13 feature films and four of his documentaries

From AnElementalCinema, readers will gain a special understanding of Kore­eda’s films through a novel connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese traditional aesthetics.