Opens April 10 | Straight off his international breakthrough CURE (1997), Kiyoshi Kurosawa directed two low-budget films using the same basic premise and the same lead actor (Sho Aikawa) to completely different ends. The experiment first resulted in SERPENT'S PATH (1998, Japan, 85 min., In Japanese with English subtitles / Format: 4K digital restoration), a dark gangland thriller with philosophical overtones. Obsessed with avenging his young daughter’s murder, yakuza subordinate Miyashita (Teruyuki Kagawa) recruits Nijima (Aikawa), a brilliant yet strangely detached math teacher, to help carry outcarry out a scheme to kidnap and torture the man allegedly responsible. But the plan goes awry when their target, Otsuki (Yurei Yanagi), fingers another mobster as the mastermind behind Miyashita’s tragedy. As the two partners ascend the yakuza chain of command in search of the true culprit, Miyashita and Nijima follow the cold, calculating logic of revenge, descending into a moral abyss from which they may never surface. Featuring Kurosawa’s patented long takes and his claustrophobic arrangement of space, SERPENT'S PATH is one of the legendary director’s most chilling investigations into the endless cycle of violence and the evil that lodges in every heart.
Plays with CHIME (2024, Japan, 45 min., In Japanese with English subtitles / Format: Digital), Kurosawa’s 45-minute featurette originally, released as an NFT, about a culinary teacher who becomes consumed with a sense of unease when strange things begin happening to his students. A masterclass in escalating dread and shocking violence, CHIME reaffirms Kiyoshi Kurosawa as one of modern horror’s most innovative and unpredictable visionaries. During a class, culinary instructor Matsuoka (Mutsuo Yoshioka) witnesses the suicide of a young student (Seiichi Kohinata), driven to insanity by what he claims is a chiming sound that controls his mind. Soon, Matsuoka begins hearing it, too, and descends into a mental abyss that warps his perception of reality and gives vent to his darkest impulses. Expertly blending psychological portraiture and hallucinatory mystery, Kurosawa offers a chilling depiction of madness that interrogates the very stability of our everyday existence, with the director’s patented creeping tracking shots and complex sound design fashioning an immersively terrifying and unnerving cinematic experience. Siskel Film Center exclusive.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu