Yasujiro Ozu – 120 Years

At the beginning of his documentary elegy Tokyo-Ga, Wim Wenders declares: “If in our century something sacred still existed, if there were such a thing as a sacred treasure of cinema, then for me it would have to be the work of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu… For never before and never since has cinema been so close to its essence and its purpose: to present an image of man in our century, a usable, true and valid image in which he not only recognizes himself, but from which , above all, you can learn about yourself.” It was an essential, absolutely inimitable cinema that the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, born in Tokyo in 1903, practiced. His career began in the silent film era and would last for decades, culminating in his last forays into the vibrant world of color cinema, at the beginning of the 1960s. At first, Ozu dedicated himself to production of short comedies, before moving on to dealing with deeper, more unsettling themes in the 1930s. It was during this period that Ozu's characteristic style began to emerge. A patient observer of everyday life, he delved deeply into the complexity of family and marital life, paying special attention to the intricate relationships between different generations. Among his most beloved works, Late Spring (1949), Tokyo Trip (1953) and An Autumn Afternoon (1962) stand out as timeless classics that continue to captivate viewers around the world. In 2012, in a survey by Sight & Sound, Tokyo Trip was voted the third best film of all time by international critics and the best film of all time by 358 filmmakers from around the world. Yasujiro Ozu's cinematic legacy endures, a testament to his incomparable ability to use cinema to tell stories of profound humanity, which earned him recognition as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Leopardo Filmes marks the year that marks the 120th anniversary of his birth, and the 60th anniversary of his death – events that occurred exactly on the same day of the year, December 12th, in a poetic and suggestive biographical circularity. Between coincidence and destiny, we feel the evocation of the Japanese notion of "shoujou ruten", which expresses the constancy of a cycle of transformation in everything, in which birth leads to death and this, in turn, allows renewal. Ozu's cinema certainly has the capacity for eternal renewal of the human soul, and is therefore immortal, and Leopardo Filmes pays tribute to him by exhibiting a cycle of his most relevant and immortal works (some mentioned above), in digital copies restored, two of which – Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) and Tokyo Twilight (1957) – recent commercially unreleased acquisitions in Portugal, to be shown in 4K.