Akira Kurosawa

Kurosawa NFT poster

The bfi celebrated the life and career of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa with a two-month retrospective at the National Film Theatre, a dozen new prints from bfi Collections and a new book from bfi Publishing.

BiographyKurosawa: A Short Biography

Born in 1910 in Tokyo, his formative influences were his teacher and the suicide of his brother, Heigo

FilmographyKurosawa: A filmography

A rundown of Kurosawa's directorial career with notes on prints and videos available from the bfi

The Hidden FortressThe Hidden Fortress

The film that so impressed George Lucas he snaffled the plot for Star Wars. This escapist spectacle, starring Kurosawa's favourite leading man Toshiro Mifune, is complete with vigorous duels, by-the-skin-of-your-teeth rescues and a fantastic finale.

Throne of BloodThrone of Blood

(Kumonosu-Jo) is Kurosawa's dark, savage interpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth with Toshiro Mifune starring as the power-hungry warrior. Kurosawa sets the infamous Scottish play in sixteenth-century Japan in land torn apart by battling feudal warlords. He seamlessly weaves elements of traditional Japanese Noh drama into the story and transforms the jidai-geki (period picture genre) from romantic costume drama into a cinematic masterpiece.

New Kurosawa printsKurosawa prints

bfi has brand new prints of classic Kurosawa films

Toshiro MifuneActor Toshiro Mifune

Biography and a selected filmography of Kurosawa's favourite leading man

Seven Samurai BFI Film ClassicSeven Samurai: a bfi Film Classic

In a new Film Classic from bfi Publishing, Joan Mellen contextualises Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in Japanese cinema and in Kurosawa's career, exploring the film's roots in medieval history, and the astonishing visual language of Kurosawa's elegiac epic

Writing on KurosawaWriting on Kurosawa

Philip Kemp writes on Kurosawa in Sight & Sound, and how to access books on Kurosawa using the bfi National Library

ObituaryKurosawa: an obituary

A final appreciation of the man and his art, added as an epilogue by Donald Richie to his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa

Kurosawa websites

Listed and annotated: essential websites about Kurosawa, part of the Film Links Gateway.