Onibaba (aka Devil Woman) Dir/Scr: Shindo Kaneto Prods: Itoya Hisao, Noto Setsuo, Minato Tamotsu Prod Co: Kindai Eiga Kyokai Cast: Otowa Nobuko, Yoshimura Jitsuko, Sato Kei 1964 / B&W / 35mm / Japanese / Eng Subtitles / 100min

Shindo considers this one of his most representative works and he is right! Onibaba is a powerful film at once intensely stylized and disturbingly moving. Set in the 14th century, Japan's war-torn era, this is a story of a struggle to survive, like The Naked Island (1960). But unlike the lyrical, organic earlier film, this is raw, primal and feverish, a cautionary tale that expresses through violence and horror the darkness that lurks behind a human facade. Shindo was himself struggling to land distribution for the film and it possibly would not have been made if Madame Kawakita had not stepped in, convincing Toho to handle it.