Co-programmed by Marc Walkow and co-presented by Subway Cinema.

Due to the catastrophic events in Japan, Takashi Miike is no longer able to attend the upcoming series. He sends his sincere regrets. The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema are partnering with The Japan Society to donate 10% of the ticket sales to all screenings in the Takashi Miike retrospective, Shinjuku Outlaw: 13 From Takashi Miike, to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund, to support relief and recovery for the 2011 Tohoku – Pacific Ocean Earthquake.

“There’s prolific, and then there’s Takashi Miike.” Read the New York Times on our Miike series here. 

Prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike first smashed his way into the American consciousness in 2001 with the double-barreled blast of Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001), one a slow-burn horror tale about the ultimate date gone wrong (which sparked waves of horrified walk-outs in theaters), the other an over-the-top, pitch-black, splatter comedy which laid out the queasy relationship between sex and death in gangster movies. Miike’s movies heralded a wave of “Asian Extreme” sex- and violence-crammed titles that filled US video store shelves before quickly dying out through oversaturation.

But with over eighty films (and counting) to his credit, more than thirty of them in the past ten years, Miike has outlasted the trend and all attempts to pigeonhole him as a cult director, becoming both a film festival darling abroad and a big-budget hitmaker at home. In 2009, his films Yatterman and Crows Zero II rocketed to the top of the Japanese box office, and in 2010, his 13 Assassins ruled both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. And in 2011, he has no less than two major new productions on the way: a children’s ninja movie and a 3D remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s samurai classic Harakiri!

So, on the eve of the U.S. release of 13 Assassins — his large-scale, old-fashioned, all-star samurai action epic — the Film Society and Subway Cinema (curators of the New York Asian Film Festival, which returns to the Walter Reade this July) are proud to present this first-ever New York retrospective devoted to the genre-hopping master of cinema. Featuring an onslaught of his best films, many of which have never screened before in New York City, it features everything from his major hits to legendary rarities like his criminally under-screened Fudoh. The time has come to remind audiences that Takashi Miike is more than just blood-and-guts, he’s also one of the most exciting and talented modern filmmakers working today.

Special thanks to Magnet Releasing for 13 Assassins.

Please note: Miike’s Dead or Alive (1999) will screen at 7:30 pm, Tuesday, March 15th at Japan Society, as part of their series “The Hardest Men in Town: Yakuza Chronicles of Sin, Sex & Violence,” which runs March 9th to 19th.