New York State Writers Institute - Classic Film Series

RAN

April 3, 1998 (Friday) at 7:30 p.m.

Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue
(Free and Open to the Public)

(Japanese, 1985, 160 minutes, color, 35 mm)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Jinpachi Nezu, Akira Terao
In Japanese with English subtitles

RAN is based on Shakespeare's King Lear and on a similar medieval samarai legend. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century war-lord who announces that he will divide his kingdom equally among his three sons. The film won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign-Language Film and several international awards, but it was not a popular hit in Japan.

Sponsored as part of the University at Albany's Shakespeare Semester