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Praised by critics from Susan Sontag to Tom Wolfe, Donald Richie is the foremost writer on Japanese culture in English, and is especially known for his instrumental role in introducing Japanese film to the West.
Tuesday, April 21
A Life in Japanese Film:
DONALD RICHIE in conversation with TOM LUDDY
“During the last fifty years, Donald Richie has been our greatest guide to the East. An outsider turned insider -- a beautiful and subtle writer with an eye for the wild life as well as an ear for the silences of Japan.” --Michael Ondaatje
Praised by critics from Susan Sontag to Tom Wolfe, Donald Richie is the foremost writer on Japanese culture in English. Born in Ohio in 1924, he has lived in Japan since 1947, except for time at Columbia University in the early 1950s and as curator of film at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1968–73. The author of some thirty books and dozens of essays, Richie is especially well known for his instrumental role in introducing Japanese film to the West and for his travel memoir The Inland Sea, which was adapted into a popular PBS documentary. In addition to The Inland Sea, his books published by Berkeley-based Stone Bridge Press include Travels in the East, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, The Donald Richie Reader, and The Japan Journals. He recently wrote the forewords to A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors by Alexander Jacoby, and Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa by Teruyo Nogami.
Richie is also an experimental filmmaker. In 1988, he was invited to be the first guest director at the Telluride Film Festival. At this special evening of recollection and conversation, Richie will discuss Japan and his insights into Japanese culture and especially Japanese film with Tom Luddy, co-founder and current co-director of the Telluride Film Festival and an executive and film producer with American Zoetrope.
7:30 PM at First Congregational Church of Berkeley/$10 ($5 students) at the door; co-sponsored by The Booksmith
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