Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Donald Richie: My Years in the Dark, 1947-2005 (The Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture)

Cinema Ruffo, Pordenone (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto), 11 Oct 2005.

In ricordo di Jonathan Dennis / The Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture

In 2002 the Giornate del Cinema Muto inaugurated this annual lecture in commemoration of Jonathan Dennis (1953-2002), founding director of the New Zealand Film Archive. Jonathan Dennis was an exemplary archivist, a champion of his country’s culture – particularly of Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand – and above all a person of outstanding human qualities.


The lecturers are selected as people who are pre-eminent in some field of work associated with the conservation or appreciation of silent cinema.

THE JONATHAN DENNIS MEMORIAL LECTURE 2005

Donald Richie: “I miei anni al buio / My Years in the Dark, 1947-2005"

We are particularly proud that this year’s lecturer is Donald Richie, recently described by Tom Wolfe as “the Lafcadio Hearn of our time, a subtle, stylish, and deceptively lucid medium between two cultures that confuse one another: the Japanese and the American.” His newly published anthology, The Donald Richie Reader, has been critically hailed as an instant literary classic, the work of a major contemporary American writer.

Since the moment of his arrival in Japan in 1946, as a young Ohio-born merchant seaman, Richie has observed the country, its people, and its culture with an extraordinarily perceptive eye, and recorded his impressions in elegant and beautiful literature – to date more than 30 volumes of journals, fiction, and essays, as well as hundreds of articles and reviews. Except for studies at Columbia University in the early 1950s and a period as Curator of Film at The Museum of Modern Art in 1968-73, Donald Richie has made his permanent home in Tokyo. He currently directs the art pages of the influential English-language newspaper The Japan Times.

Donald Richie has been recognised as a world authority on Japanese cinema since The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (1959), co-authored with Joseph L. Anderson, first opened up to the West the hitherto unknown story of Japanese cinema history. His subsequent writings have included indispensable studies of Ozu and Kurosawa.
– David Robinson

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