KWAIDAN 4K Restoration to Open at Film Forum
Janus Films is behind the restoration screening at the West Houston Street theater.
A 4K restoration of Masaki Kobayashi's director's original cut of KWAIDAN is set to open at Film Forum. The restoration is being presented by Janus Films, according to a release from the West Houston Street theater.
Masaki Kobayashi's rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories, KWAIDAN 怪談 (1964), starring Tatsuya Nakadai, will run in a new 4K restoration of the director's original cut from Friday, September 11 through Thursday, September 17 at Film Forum.
After more than a decade of sober political dramas and socially minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Kobayashi made a dramatic stylistic departure with KWAIDAN. Rentarô Mikuni discovers a skeleton at a wedding feast after taking a second wife; woodcutter Nakadai encounters a mysterious woman in a snowstorm; a blind biwa player is summoned to perform before a court of spirits; and an apparition materializes in a cup of tea.
Featuring vividly surreal sets (Kobayashi's first color film), luminous cinematography, and an eerily atmospheric score, these haunting tales of supernatural retribution and spiritual trials, adapted from ex pat Lafcadio Hearn's celebrated collections of Japanese folklore, are as meticulously crafted as they are deeply unsettling.
