We are toasting our friends and neighbors at Vancouver's Powell Street Festival - celebrating their 45th year! - with several screenings of Japanese films we adore, including iconic auteur Akira Kurosawa's indisputably epic masterpiece SEVEN SAMURAI on Sunday, August 1.

A landmark film in Japanese cinema due to its creative and technical achievements, Seven Samurai has consistently ranked high among both film critics and movie lovers - its influence as both a historical drama and for its phenomenal action sequences as relevant today as upon its initial release in 1954. (It was adapted by Hollywood with western The Magnificent Seven in 1960.) Kurosawa co-wrote, edited, and directed this simple tale set in rural Japan in the late 1500s, and follows a veteran samurai recruited by a farming village to protect them from bandits. In turn, the warrior hires six "ronin" (masterless samurai) to help him in exchange for food (and some useful training). The film culminates in a famous, epic battle scene - best appreciated on the big screen! Starring Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Keiko Tsushima.

"The greatest movie ever made about warriors and battle." Chicago Sun Times

"Again and again, Kurosawa sends a dark thrill through his audience with a touch of sensuous physical reality." Time Magazine

Sunday, August 1
Doors 8:20 pm | Movie 8:45 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.
Tickets $15 | $15 at the door

SEVEN SAMURAI "Shichinin no Samurai" (Akira Kurosawa, 1954 / 207 mins / PG / Japanese with English subs) After he falls on hard times, a veteran samurai answers a village's request for protection from bandits. The samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and in exchange the villagers provide the soldiers with food. A giant battle occurs when 40 bandits attack the village.