Akira Kurosawa Japanese 黒澤 明 Hepburn Kurosawa Akira March 23 1910 September 6 1998 was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema Kurosawa displayed a bold dynamic style strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it he was involved with all aspects of film production Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936 following a brief stint as a painter After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata 1943 After the war the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel 1948 in which Kurosawa cast the then littleknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role cemented the directors reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films Rashomon 1950 which premiered in Tokyo became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s including a number of highly regarded and often adapted films such as Ikiru 1952 Seven Samurai 1954 Throne of Blood 1957 Yojimbo 1961 and High and Low 1963 After the 1960s he became much less prolific even so his later workincluding two of his final films Kagemusha 1980 and Ran 1985continued to receive great acclaim In 1990 he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement Posthumously he was named Asian of the Century in the Arts Literature and Culture category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century His career has been honored by many retrospectives critical studies and biographies in both print and video and by releases in many consumer media Description above from the Wikipedia article Akira Kurosawa licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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