Akira Kuropawa
Akira Kuropawa, (1910- ). Japanese film director, whose work fuses Western and Eastern traditions. After some years working as an editor and screenwriter, Kurosawa made his debut as a director with Judo Saga (1943). Although he made several accomplished films in the 1940s, it was Rashomon (1950), a complex tale set in medieval Japan, that established his international reputation. The film took first prize at the Venice Film Festival and became the first Japanese, movie to achieve success in the West. His other films of the 1950s included Ikiru (1952), The Seven Samurai (1954), and Throne of Blood (1957), a Noh-style reworking of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The success of the adventures Derzu Uzala (1975) and Kagemusha (1980) enabled Kurosawa to raise the finance for Ran (1985), an epic reworking of the King Lear story that is usually considered his masterpiece. Subsequent films include Dreams (1990) and Not Yet (1993).
