NOW PLAYING: Hiroshi Teshigahara's WOMAN IN THE DUNES, Plus Short Films by Donald Richie and Rare Archival Treasures

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STILL: HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA’S WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964). SOURCE: IMDB.

ORIGINAL THEATRICAL RELEASE POSTER FOR WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964). SOURCE: THE MOVIE DATABASE (TMDB).

In addition to her work as a film programmer, Adrienne Mancia was an accomplished writer of film criticism and film treatments. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 avant-garde psychological thriller WOMAN IN THE DUNES was a film Mancia championed at length in Film Comment, and is one of the titles GME’s team has selected to stream this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room. (Click the image above to view Teshigahara’s film).

WOMAN IN THE DUNES follows an amateur entomologist named Niki Junpei (played by Eiji Okada) who, after missing his bus out of a desert where he has gone to study a mysterious species of beetle, seeks refuge with a young woman (Kyōko Kishida) in her hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What follows is described by The Criterion Collection as “one of cinema’s most unnerving and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday life as a Sisyphean struggle.”

In her essay for Film Comment, which can be read below, Mancia praises Teshigahara’s film as “ingenious” and remarks: “WOMAN IN THE DUNES is a film that raises many questions. Its denouement is ambiguous. Rightly so, for there is no one solution to contemporary alienation.” She also notes: “[In this film], sand becomes water, water, light; and then sand again. Each is different; yet they are similar. They are fused and confused. This is alchemy; yet it is real or was real or could be real. Reality is on the screen but also a dream, myth, unconscious primordial memories.”

Click on the first image to enlarge and scroll through the pages of Mancia’s review:

Mancia invokes the writing of her colleague, Japanese cinema expert Donald Richie, in this essay. Richie and Mancia worked together for a number of years at The Museum of Modern Art, where Richie was Curator of Film from 1969 to 1972. Mancia and Richie even collaborated on a treatment for a feature film, titled LOVE’S TENT, that Richie was set to direct in 1969. (The film never came to fruition). This rare and fascinating treatment, culled from Mancia’s paper archive, can be read below.

Click on the first image to enlarge and scroll through the pages of the treatment:

In addition to his work as an author, historian, and film curator, Richie was an accomplished director of experimental films, which he made in Japan beginning in the early 1960s. These shorts are included in this month’s program in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room as bonus features, and can be viewed below.

WARGAMES (1962, B&W, sound, Japan)

“WARGAMES is a neatly balanced cine-poem on violence and innocence and a quietly observed soliloquy on freedom. The portrait of children enacting the creation and breakdown of a community captures Richie’s charming persona and endearing view of the world yet unearths some deeply felt loathing for humanity and its history. Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the originator of the (in)famous dance form butoh, assisted Richie in production and the result is a masterpiece in visual poetry that is a treasure to behold.” —Close-Up Film Centre

ATAMI BLUES (1962, B&W, sound, Japan)

“A young man and a woman meet in the bath of a resort in Atami one evening.” —IMDb

BOY WITH CAT (1966, B&W, sound, Japan)

“A cat's inquisitive look interferes with the pleasurable sensations of a boy while masturbating.” —Frameline

FIVE PHILOSOPHICAL FABLES (1967, B&W, sound, Japan)

“These short films are extremely provocative ‘fables’ of modern Japan, rather barbaric in their eroticism, but peculiarly admirable: one is touched by them with alternate feelings of horrified surprise and amusement, and it is reasonable to assume that the director’s point of view is basically satirical; he seems to carry the Japanese penchant for covertly hostile humor to its ultimate.” —Albert Johnson, Film Quarterly

NOW PLAYING: Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13

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NOW PLAYING: Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13

In 1963, while working as an assistant for producer Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola made his directorial debut with the mystery horror film DEMENTIA 13. As a programmer at The Museum of Modern Art, Adrienne Mancia was an advocate of progressive “New Hollywood” filmmakers such as Coppola who, in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, subverted the moral and aesthetic traditions (and limitations) of the studio system by producing thematically and stylistically challenging work influenced by European cinema, the American avant-garde, and the countercultural ethos of the era at large. Part of Mancia’s advocacy of these filmmakers was seeking out their first works (often made for low-budget producers like Corman and production companies like American International Pictures) in order to chart the trajectory of their careers and connect their early output to the later works that brought them mainstream fame.

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NOW PLAYING: Women Filmmakers

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NOW PLAYING: Women Filmmakers

Adrienne Mancia was a fearless advocate and personal friend of innumerable women directors who pioneered new and challenging forms of filmmaking throughout the 20th century. This selection of short films, curated by the GME team, highlights the work of groundbreaking women filmmakers Maya Deren, Faith Hubley, Agnès Varda, and Shirley Clarke that Adrienne programmed and championed throughout her career.

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NOW PLAYING: Holiday Films

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NOW PLAYING: Holiday Films

As the holiday season approaches, GME’s launch of the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room comprises an international array of short films, a format that Adrienne championed throughout her career. The movies streamed here are primarily in the experimental vein, and thus are lesser-known movies in the canon of holiday films.

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