Shochiku Centennial Collection at HFA, Part 1

The Harvard Film Archive is proud to officially announce an important new partnership, a collaboration with legendary Japanese motion picture studio Shochiku, to create a legacy collection of new 35mm prints of classic films from Shochiku’s impressive catalogue. As part of the HFA Collection, these prints will be vital resources for research, teaching and study at Harvard for years to come. Shochiku prints will also, of course, be regularly featured in the HFA’s cinematheque program. The Shochiku Centennial Collection is a multi-year project, the goal of which is to strike fifty new prints of studio titles dating from the silent era through the 1970s, selected by HFA Director Haden Guest and Alexander Zahlten, Harvard Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Many prints will be made in tandem with the studio’s ambitious restoration program, which has already created glorious new films and DCPs of classic Shochiku titles. Essential support for this project and collection comes from Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.

Over the next years, the Harvard Film Archive will continue to showcase films and filmmakers represented in the Shochiku Centennial Collection. We begin with a compact program that combines newly struck prints, an encore from our summer-long Ozu retrospective, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, as well as vintage prints of Yamada’s Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp and The Sun’s Burial by Oshima. Also included is the new 4K version of Shinoda’s Demon Pond, showcased as a prime example of Shochiku’s superlative restoration work.

The Harvard Film Archive is proud to welcome Shochiku CEO Jay Sakomoto for this auspicious event, together with Meri Koyama, former Head of Sales and now General Manager of Shochiku Theaters. – Haden Guest