PICK ONE

1. Donald Ritchie describes Harakiri as an anti-samurai film, a film that uses the conventions of jidaigeki and chanbara films to offer a blistering political critique. Select another Akira Kurosawa Film, and compare and contrast your chosen film with Harakiri. Pay close attention to the way that both films use their historical settings to say something about contemporary politics and human complexity.

2. The transcendental style, according to Paul Schrader, is a cinema of contemplation: a reconfiguration of film time that invites a different and more meditative level of participation from the viewer. Select any film directed by Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Wim Wedners, Abbas Kiarostami, or Terrence Malick and contrast your chosen film to a film directed by Yasujiro Ozu, highlighting how both of your selected films exemplify or depart from Schraders notion of transcendental cinema.