Directed by Shohei Imamura

Born one hundred years ago this month, Shohei Imamura left behind a body of work chronicling a Japan transformed by war, occupation, and rapid social change, yet still governed by the most primal of human instincts. Though he began his career as an assistant to Yasujiro Ozu, Imamura forged an explosive cinema that stood in direct opposition to the classical master’s elegant restraint. Raw, earthy, sensual, and irreverent, Imamura’s films train an almost anthropological eye on the roiling underclass of Japanese society, revealing a world of criminals, outcasts, deviants, and subjugated women fighting to survive on the margins. From breakthrough works like PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS and THE INSECT WOMAN to late-career triumphs like the Palme d’Or winners THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA and THE EEL, Imamura’s films pulse with the anarchic, irrational force of the id.