When Seijun Suzuki returned to directing in 2001 after a decade-long break, he was in a reflective mood. His work recently had begun reaching new fans around the world thanks to a touring retrospective in the 1990s. Pistol Opera (made in 2001 and screening tonight) was pitched as a remake of Branded to Kill, the notorious 1967 film that simultaneously got Suzuki banned from filmmaking and gained him legions of fans in the Japanese counterculture. Instead, Pistol Opera serves as a tour of Suzuki’s outrageous career: a riot of color, violence, sensuality, and, above all, anarchy.
Our Suzuki retrospective concludes on Sunday with his final film, Princess Raccoon, a charming musical inspired by Japanese folklore and featuring megastars Zhang Ziyi and Jo Odagiri. It concludes, appropriately, with the cast waving goodbye to the camera.
After that screening, we, too, will wave goodbye as the Meyer Auditorium, along with the rest of the Freer Gallery, closes for renovations on January 4. Along with visiting our exhibitions in the Sackler, which remains open, I hope you’ll join us at other venues in the DC area for our 2016 film program. It kicks off with the twentieth edition of our annual Iranian Film Festival, which has found a temporary home at the National Gallery of Art and the AFI Silver Theatre.
