Aesthetics of Negativity: The Cinema of Suzuki Seijun

Description: This thesis examines the cinematic works of director Suzuki Seijun (active 1956 to 2005). Particularly but not exclusively, it emphasizes the stylistic and ideological aspects of Suzuki’s work in the 1960s at Nikkatsu studios, arguing that these films are to be accorded a prominent place in the evolution of film language and representational practice in that decade, in both a Japanese context and a wider transnational one.