Reorienting Ozu

Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence offers new perspectives on Ozu Yasujiro and his influence on global art cinema directors. Ozu has been admired both by film scholars and filmmakers around the globe, having been at the center of significant scholarly debates, and being considered by many as a precursor of an aesthetic legacy and sensibility explored in the global art scene. By situating Ozu within the proper historical and discursive contexts, and thereby breaking with essentialist, traditionalist, and formalist readings of him, this volume helps to initiate a new theorizing and historical understanding of Ozu as a director who had to negotiate with production and socio-historical circumstances of Japan. Further explored in the volume is his relationship with his successors, who are inspired by and pay homage to Ozu, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Suo Masayuki, Iguchi Nami, Claire Denis, Wim Wenders, Kore-eda Hirokazu, Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismäki, and Abbas Kiarostami.