Contemporary Japanese Cinema and Literature
St Petersburg University Representative Office in Spain invites you to the online lecture "Contemporary Japanese Cinema and Literature", dedicated to the Japanese style of filmmaking and literature. The lecture will be given by Nina Shcherbak, candidate of philology.
When we talk about Japanese cinema, we usually think of the great directors of the last century, such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa. Meanwhile, in the last twenty years, Japanese film industry has continued to produce remarkable films: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s "Air Doll", Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" and "Drive My Car".
While Japanese culture is heavily influenced by Buddhism, which discourages excessive emotion, the Japanese films explore the nature of human passions deeply and intensely. The unhurried pace allows the viewer to delve into the inner world of the film characters and accompany them in moments of unbridled triumph and bitter sorrow. Japanese cinema is inextricably linked to literature, where Japanese writers explore human psychology in all its complexity.
Nina Shcherbak will tell you how Haruki Murakami, one of Japan’s foremost postmodernists, thinks, why Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize, and how scandalous bestsellers became masterpieces of world cinema.
The lecture will be held as part of the celebrations to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia. The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.