Documentaries on Akira Kurosawa

A number of Akira Kurosawa documentaries have been put together over the years, and this page attempts to make some sense of it all. The focus, as elsewhere on this site, is currently primarily on documentaries available for the English speaking audience, but in case you know of any titles not mentioned here, please let me know!

Note that short documentaries that were made solely for DVD extras are not listed here. To get more information those, see the Kurosawa’s Movies on DVD section of this website.

See also the separate page on Online Documentaries on Akira Kurosawa.

Index:
Akira Kurosawa (2001)
A Message from Akira Kurosawa: For Beautiful Movies (2000)
Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
A.K. (1985)
Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999)

Akira Kurosawa (2001)
directed by Adam Low, narrated by Sam Shepard

An over three-hour documentary on the life and work of Akira Kurosawa, which was first broadcast on the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Hailed as the most definitive documentary on the director, the film follows Kurosawa’s life chronologically. I cannot unfortunately add any subjective personal opinions, as I haven’t seen the documentary.

The DVD, which comes with almost two hours of extra footage (thus totalling over five hours of documentary material), is available only as a Region 1 (North America) print. Both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk have it for sale.

A Message from Akira Kurosawa: For Beautiful Movies (Kurosawa Akira kara no mesaaji: utsukushii eiga wo, 2000)
directed by Hisao Kurosawa

A 98-minute Japanese documentary that includes ten thematically separated interviews with Akira Kurosawa, filmed towards the end of his life. The director discusses his film making and his quest for making the perfect, or “beautiful”, movie.

“Message from Akira Kurosawa” is included in Criterion’s release of Ikiru. It can also be purchased separately at Amazon.co.jp, but that release comes without English subtitles.

Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
Toho Masterworks

The Toho Masterworks series “It is Wonderful to Create” consists of half-an-hour long short documentaries on Kurosawa’s films. The set is not available on a single DVD at the moment. Instead, relevant episodes have been licensed by Criterion for their releases of Kurosawa’s films on DVD.

A.K. (1985)
directed by Chris Maker

This 75-minute behind-the-scenes look at the making of Kurosawa’s Ran is fascinating in as much as it employs something of a fly-on-the-wall approach in following Kurosawa’s working methods. The result is an interesting experience, where you simply observe the director working with his cast and crew, with very little narration from Chris Maker himself. As such, the documentary (if one can call it one) is certainly unique, and something that every admirer of Kurosawa’s work ought to be interested in. At the same time, it is not really something that survives repeated viewings particularly well. Not that it would have been intended for that purpose, either.

“A.K.” is made available on DVD releases of Ran — both the Criterion and Optimum releases have it. For more information, see Kurosawa’s movies on DVD.

Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999)
directed by Alex Cox

In just 50 minutes the British film maker Alex Cox runs through the most important facts about Kurosawa’s life and works, providing enough information for someone not familiar with Kurosawa to become interested in his works. Not necessarily mandatory viewing for fans, though.

As far as I know, “Kurosawa: The Last Emperor” has not been made commercially available.