Donald Richie Comes to Queens
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
An American-born author who first went to Japan with the American occupation force as a civilian staff writer for the Pacific “Stars and Stripes,” Donald Richie has been the pre-eminent American scholar and historian of Japanese film since the 1950s.
Mr. Richie’s books — including “The Japanese Film,” “The Films of Akira Kurosawa,” and “Ozu: His Life and Films” — are widely credited with introducing American audiences to the riches of Japanese cinema. His emphasis on the “presentational” nature of Japan’s cinema, as compared with the “representational” films of the West, is a benchmark in film criticism.
Mr. Richie, who has lived in Japan for the past 50 years, is also an accomplished filmmaker. In a rare New York appearance, he will present a program of his experimental films, discuss his career, and introduce a screening of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon.”
The event is part of a week-long tribute to Mr. Richie at the Museum of the Moving Image titled “The Japanese Film: A Tribute to Donald Richie.”
