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Mark Schilling

Japanese filmmaker took what he learned from legendary film director John Ford and applied it to his own work. In turn, his films inspired Hollywood with their masterful storytelling and flawless composition.

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When it was released two decades ago, it hardly made a splash but find out what makes the film stand out among its more famous contemporaries, including Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke

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Although it wasn’t as big a success as other Ghibli outings, Yamadas is a gently comic work with plenty of nostalgic appeal

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Mizoguchi’s themes may have fallen out of fashion in recent decades but Last Chrysanthemums offers a perfect opportunity to acquaint yourself with a master of haunting, elegiac cinema

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Nishikawa’s films are filled with frauds, fakes and phoneys, starting with this, her debut, screening as part of the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, in which the secrets and lies of the Akechi family unravel

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Masahiro Shinoda’s fim is a faithful adaptation of an 18th-century piece of puppet theatre – and also a stark and discomfiting work of nouvelle vague genius

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Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988) has been named one of the best animated films of all time; it also has been listed by Empire film magazine as one of the most depressing movies ever. In other words, it's a must-see film that will leave you in a puddle of tears — a reputation that has stopped many people from watching it.

When it comes to nursing a grudge, female spirits have the killing edge, as the Ju-on films have proved time and again, writes Mark Schilling.

When Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement from feature filmmaking in September last year, it was hardly unexpected: the septuagenarian co-founder and resident genius of Studio Ghibli had been retiring and returning for years.

Nagisa Oshima (1932-2013) began his career in the 1950s at Shochiku studio as a sort of Japanese Orson Welles - a wunderkind shaking up a hidebound film industry. And like Welles, whose Citizen Kane (1941) eviscerated the biggest media mogul of its day, Oshima enjoyed tweaking the noses of the powerful, beginning with his studio boss, Shiro Kido.

Ask Japanese film critics and scholars for the names of their country's most important directors of the 1990s and their lists will probably start with Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Japanese filmmakers reacted quickly to the disaster - but their angle of approach often differed from that of the local mass media, which tended to follow the government line, while taking care never to show the bodies of victims.

While a cinematic giant in his own country, where his films were commercial and critical successes, Keisuke Kinoshita (1912-1998) didn't receive the same recognition abroad as contemporary Akira Kurosawa or Shochiku studio senior Yasujiro Ozu.

Since then Miike has continued to be a commercial hitmaker in Japan, and a festival favourite and critical darling abroad.