Akira Kurosawa’s visually spectacular epic transplants Shakespeare’s King Lear from Celtic Britain to feudal Japan. In its epic scope and expert execution, Ran can be seen as a culmination of the great Japanese director’s filmmaking career; a late triumph which he planned and refined over several years.
Up Next in Period & History
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Wittgenstein
Written for Channel 4 by radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton but heavily reworked by Derek Jarman, Wittgenstein is a bold, offbeat biography, personalised in Jarman’s unique style to address the politics and sexuality of the great, troubled philosopher.
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Akenfield
Based on Ronald Blythe’s much-loved oral history book, Akenfield traces three generations of one Suffolk family and their lives in the farming industry, with director Peter Hall – known for his theatre direction - using to great effect a cast non-professional actors drawn from the communities of ...
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South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorio...
Shackleton's death over 100 years ago in 1922 is seen to have marked the end of the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration. A record of one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration, South is the original film – exquisitely photographed by Frank Hurley – of Shackleton’s 1914-1...
