I came across this in Japan Today:
Kurosawa's influence lives on, six years after his deathTOKYO Six years after renowned moviemaker Akira Kurosawa died, his influence lives on, with a movie school bearing his name under construction in Japan and another planned in the United States.
Hollywood appears to have taken an interest in the human drama aspects of Kurosawa's works, instead of samurai fighting scenes, with DreamWorks, led by director Steven Spielberg, planning to make a film based on Kurosawa's "Ikiru" (To Live).
The original Kurosawa film released in 1952 portrays a civil servant who has worked for 30 years without purpose or satisfaction, only to learn he has cancer.
He decides to dedicate his remaining days to construction of a small park. Kurosawa dwelt on the meaning of life through the soul of a man facing death.
Hollywood earlier turned out its version of Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece, "Seven Samurai," which was about seven samurai who are brought together to protect a village and its inhabitants from bandits.
In making "Seven Samurai," Kurosawa was the first director to utilize multiple cameras and his innovative technique had a huge impact on the movie industry around the world. The Hollywood movie was titled "The Magnificent Seven."
Kurosawa Production of Yokohama is constructing a building for the Kurosawa Akira Cinema College, which is due to open in the spring of 2006 in Tokyo's Adachi Ward and will have some 500 students.
The late director's motion picture staff will serve as instructors.
Hisao Kurosawa, production president and the eldest son of Kurosawa, said a movie school carrying the name of Kurosawa is also likely to open in California next year.
The two projected schools will promote interaction of instructors and students in the future, he said.
At the same time, plans are under way in Akita in Akita Prefecture to recreate the Kurosawa group's open door movie-making set, with a view to completing it in two years.
The stopover town seen in "Yojinbo," and some scenes from "Rashomon" may be recreated. The set will be open to visitors and used by Cinema College students to study shooting film on location.
Kurosawa said the reason movie fans continue to like his father's films is because they are both entertaining and artistic, and are big in scale.
He said the college will teach students Kurosawa's spirit and his staff's techniques.
The Hollywood film production based on Kurosawa's original version will encourage fans to see Kurosawa's movies again.
"We will have to keep conveying Kurosawa Akira in order to see genuinely good movies," the son said.
September 26, 2004
Amen.
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