One of the most acclaimed Japanese directors of all time, Hiroshi Teshigahara distinguished himself in the 1960s with a series of sinuous, atmospheric, and daring films. Teshigahara found his spiritual partner in novelist and screenwriter Kobo Abe, with whom he collaborated on several Kafkaesque portraits of identities in peril, films that captivated mainstream audiences while also touching the edges of the Japanese avant-garde. The existential ghost story PITFALL (Otoshiana), the shocking, erotic fable WOMAN IN THE DUNES (Sunna no onna), and the sci-fi-tinged nightmare THE FACE OF ANOTHER (Tanin no kao) are among cinema's enduring enigmas and rarest pleasures.

Teshigahara left filmmaking for several years during the 1970s—at the peak of his creativity—to relieve his father as headmaster of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, the traditional art of flower arranging. In 1984 he returned to filmmaking with an unusual and unexpected project: a poetic essay on the architecture of Spain's Antonio Gaudi, a landmark documentary and, like his fiction films, an enduring cult item.

Part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual two-week, citywide event celebrating spring. The 2008 Festival is March 29 - April 13, and will feature daily cultural performances, sporting events, arts & crafts, demonstrations and other special events. The National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates the 96th anniversary of the gift of the cherry blossom trees and the enduring friendship between the citizens of the United States and Japan.

All notes courtesy of The Criterion Collection/Janus Films.

All films in Japanese with English subtitles except when otherwise noted. ALL FILMS NOT RATED

Member passes will be accepted for all four films in the Hiroshi Teshigahara series.

THE FACE OF ANOTHER
[Tanin no kao]

A staggering work of existential science fiction, THE FACE OF ANOTHER dissects identity with the sure hand of a surgeon. Burned and disfigured in an industrial accident, then estranged from his family and friends, Tatsuya Nakadai agrees to his psychiatrist's radical new experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. Thus further alienated from the world around him, Nakadai gives in to his darker temptations. With unforgettable imagery, Teshigahara's film explores the limits of and the freedom in acquiring a new persona - and questions the notion of individuality itself.

DIR/PROD Hiroshi Teshigahara; SCR Kôbô Abe, based on his novel. Japan, 1966, b&w, 124 min.

Saturday, April 12, 9:05; Sunday, April 13, 6:45; Wednesday, April 16, 9:15; Thursday, April 17, 9:00

WOMAN IN THE DUNES
[Suna no onna]

Oscar-nominated for Best Director, 1966

One of the 1960s' great international art-house sensations, WOMAN IN THE DUNES introduced many Westerners to Teshigahara's surreal, idiosyncratic worldview. An amateur entomologist has left Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle in a remote desert. When he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow (Kiyoko Kishida) who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema's most bristling, unnerving and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean struggle.

DIR Hiroshi Teshigahara; SCR Kôbô Abe, based on his story; PROD Kiichi Ichikawa and Tadashi Oono. Japan, 1964, b&w, 147 min.

Friday, April 18, 9:00; Saturday, April 19, 6:15; Sunday, April 20, 6:15

PITFALL
[Otoshiana]

Teshigahara's debut feature and first collaboration with novelist Kôbô Abe, PITFALL is many things: a mysterious, unsettling ghost story, a portrait of human alienation and a compellingly surreal critique of soulless industry, shot in elegant black-and-white. When a miner treks out with his young son to become a migrant worker, he finds himself moving from one eerie landscape to another, intermittently followed (and photographed) by an enigmatic man in a clean white suit, and eventually coming face-to-face with his inescapable destiny.

DIR Hiroshi Teshigahara; SCR Kôbô Abe, based on his story; PROD Tadashi Oono. Japan, 1962, b&w, 97 min.

Saturday, April 26, 8:00; Sunday, April 27, 2:20, Tuesday, April 29, 9:00; Thursday, May 1, 7:00

ANTONIO GAUDí

Less a documentary than a visual poem, Teshigahara's ANTONIO GAUDí takes viewers on a tour of the spectacular works of Catalán architect Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926), including his massive, still-unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona. With camera work as bold and sensual as the curves of his subject's organic structures, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.

DIR Hiroshi Teshigahara; PROD Noriko Nomura. Japan, 1984, color, 72 min. In Japanese and Spanish with English subtitles.

Saturday, May 3, 5:30; Sunday, May 4, 5:30