A predictable array of monochrome production stills punctuated by portraits of filmmakers adorn the booking programme of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department's Repertory Cinema 2008 showcase.
Most of the portraits are of men who seem to be well past their prime, their solemn expressions framed by white hair. They look like ripe old company executives or benign academics - yet Hiroshi Teshigahara, Yasuzo Masumura, Masahiro Shinoda, Kaneto Shindo, Shohei Imamura and Nagisa Oshima shocked mainstream film audiences during the 1960s.
Their work illustrated vividly the pent-up angst and frustration bubbling beneath the rosy sheen of Japan's post-war economic miracle.
And just like their French peers - and their Hong Kong counterparts, who would emerge in the late 70s - the Japanese New Wave directors did not share a rigid set of aesthetics.
Imamura's accessible stories driven by ribald protagonists, for instance, has little in common with Teshigahara's thoughtful treatises based on existentialist writer Kobo Abe's screenplays. What links this disparate group is their penchant for challenging the conventions of Japan's film industry and the prevailing social norms.
Most Japanese New Wave filmmakers began their careers working for big studios such as Shochiku, Nikkatsu and Daei. They got their first breaks as assistant directors. Imamura and Shinoda worked on Yasujiro Ozu's productions, Masumura honed his craft with Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, and Oshima ran errands for Masaki Kobayashi.
It was as independents that they bloomed. Having made his first film, A Street of Love and Hope, for Shochiku, Oshima came to prominence with films he produced for his own Sozosha company (Violence at Noon, Pleasures of the Flesh). After The Dry Lake and Assassination, Shinoda set up Hyogensha, producing Clouds at Sunset and Double Suicide.