Freer Gallery of Art: Japan - Hardcover

Japanese film director Seijun Suzuki began his career making increasingly outrageous B movies for Nikkatsu Studios in the 1950s and 1960s (he was eventually fired for his stylistic excesses). More than ten years later, he reinvented himself as an independent filmmaker with a uniquely eccentric vision. He remains a cult figure outside of Japan and his influence can be seen in the work of directors as diverse as Jim Jarmusch, Baz Luhrmann, and Quentin Tarantino. Time and Place Are Nonsense, the first book-length study of his work in English, aims to enhance the appreciation of his films by analyzing them in light of the cultural and political turmoil of post-World War II Japan and the aesthetic traditions that inform them.

Tom Vick is curator of film at Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries. He is the author of Asian Cinema: A Field Guide. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.