Seven Samurai

Let’s start with some stats: 148 shooting days, a running time of 207 minutes, one of 68 films produced by Toho in 1954 – and one of around 400 Japanese features which opened in cinemas in this ‘miraculous’ year. Seven Samurai with Toshiro Mifune is an exceptional epic and an awe-inducing display of Akira Kurosawa’s craft. As Adam Garbicz said: ‘He worked on this piece of art like a general who prepares for battle’. At the same time, it’s worth noting that this monumental adventure was shot at the height of the Japanese studio system and shows the scale of its possibilities. At the time television was present in just 4% of Japanese households while more than a billion cinema tickets were sold. Seven Samurai, a story of a group of warriors who defend peasants from a growing number of bandits, takes full advantage of the possibilities of the big screen: images are by turns poetic, violent, pompous, and dynamic. The restoration screened in the cinema will bring the film back to its former glory.

Sebastian Smoliński

Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who is widely considered one of the greatest directors of all time. He’s known for a bold, dynamic directorial style which was influenced by Western cinema; in turn, his films have been a major influence on cinema outside of Japan, especially in the western and sci-fi genres. His best-known films include Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985).

4K restoration.