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. But as a 19-film retrospective at the 2012 Tokyo Filmex festival made clear, the director of 49 feature films was more of a boundary-pushing filmmaker than his decades as a studio stalwart would imply.

Best known in Japan for , a hit 1954 melodrama about a devoted teacher (Hideko Takamine) and her class of children on an Inland Sea island, Kinoshita also made Japan's first Technicolor film, (1951), a cheeky comedy of manners starring Takamine as an exotic dancer returning to her rural hometown, and (1955), a kabuki-esque drama set in a feudal-era village where the old are abandoned on a nearby mountain to leave more food for the young.

Beyond these well-known films are "hidden gems", such as the four that were screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival this year, and have additional screenings within the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society's new Cine Fan repertory cinema programme.