Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki

Title: Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki
Author List: Tom Vick
Publisher: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution; distributed by University of Washington Press
Publication Date: November 2015
Publication Type: book
Format: print (softcover)
Pages: 192
Illustrations: 132
ISBN: 9780934686334
Collection Area(s): Contemporary Art, Japanese Art
Time and Place Are Nonsense book cover. In the top half of the cover, the title appears over a black background. The bottom half is a screencap from one of Suzuki's films; two men stand back to back, pointing guns in opposite directions.
Description:

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.