Hiroshi TESHIGAHARA
Hiroshi Teshigahara was born in 1927 in Tokyo as the son of the famous Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the Sogetsu School of ikebana. Teshigahara graduated in 1950 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and went on to direct his first film, Pitfall (1962), in collaboration with author Kobo Abe and musician Tōru Takemitsu. The film won the NHK New Director's award, and throughout the 1960s, he continued to collaborate on films with Abe and Takemitsu while simultaneously pursuing his interest in ikebana and sculpture on a professional level.
In 1964, the Teshigahara/Abe film "Woman in the Dunes" was considered for an Academy Award and ended up winning the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1972, he worked with Japanese researcher and translator John Nathan to make the movie "Summer Soldiers", a film set during the Vietnam War about American deserters living on the fringe of Japanese society.
From the mid-1970s on, his feature film work decreased as he concentrated more on documentaries, exhibitions and the Sogetsu School, and became grand master of the school in 1980.
Filmography:
1959 Jose Torres
1962 Le Traquenard (Otoshiana)
1964 La Fleur de l'âge, ou Les adolescentes (Shishunki)
1964 La femme du sable (Suna no onna)
1966 Le Visage d'un autre (Tanin no kao)
1967 Bakuso (Indi race)
1968 Le Plan déchiquetté (Moetsukita chizu)
1972 Summer Soldiers (Sama soruja)
1984 Antonio Gaudí
1989 Rikyu
1992 La Princesse Go (Goh-hime)
The Woman in the Dunes - Suna no onna (1964)
On nice summer day Jumpei Niki, a Tokyo based entomologist and educator, is in a seaside village collecting specimens of sand insects. As it is late in the day and as he has missed the last bus back to the city, some of the villagers suggest that he spend the night there, they offering to find him a place to stay. That place is the home of a young woman, whose house is located at the bottom of a sand pit accessible only by ladder. He later learns that the woman's husband and child died in a sandstorm, their undiscovered bodies buried somewhere near the house. More
