Film Collection: Beyond The Films

I'm a collector by nature, so my enjoyment of films has led to healthy film collection. My film collection however is not just composed of the films themselves. When an individual film or director makes a strong impression upon, there is a good chance I'll seek out things to add to my collection that go beyond the films themselves. This could include, but is not limited to, things like posters, books, programs, stamps.... whatever. From time to time i'll share some details and photos of the things that have made their way into my collection.

My favorite director is Yasujiro Ozu, so I'm always looking for new Ozu items to add to my collection. I'm sure there are people with much larger collections of Ozu items, but I'm pretty proud of what I've managed to acquire. Here is a program from an exhibition they had at The Kamakura Museum Of Literature in 2003. Some information about the exhibition as well as this program can be found here. I'm glad i picked it up when i did, since it was reasonably priced, and i haven't seen one up for sale since. As you can imagine i get pretty excited when i find a new Ozu thing to add to the collection!

Kurosawa Paintings

As might already be obvious, I'm a huge fan of Japanese Cinema. When it comes to classic Japanese cinema, one of the masters, especially when it comes to making films that were widely appreciated in the west, was Akira Kurosawa. He directed 30 films during his life, all of which are worth seeing. I should note that while i own all 30 films that he directed, I've only watched 28 so far. I still think that makes my opinion reasonably grounded.

One of my favorite things about Kurosawa was that in addition to his career as a film director, he was also an avid painter. This means that when he was doing storyboards for his films, he was able to paint scenes to show exactly what he wanted them to look like in vivid color. Below are some examples of his amazing work. All of these are featured in one of my most prized possessions, this book which is now out of print, that is a complete collection of Kurosawa's drawings are paintings. A less complete, and much smaller version is available here at a very friendly price.