Dr. Akagi

Free ticket with a $10 K2 minimum
1998, Japan, Shohei Imamura, 129 min.
Starring Akira Emoto, Kumiko Aso, and Juro Kara.
Introduced by Gregory Hosho Abels

Movie Medicine Facts
The shot of is Akira Emoto blocking the view of the naked Kumiko Aso is referenced in the 2001 film Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001).
Asked by a critic to define himself and his work, Imamura famously replied, “I am interested in the relationship between the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of everyday life in Japan is built.”
In his review of the film, Roger Ebert claimed, “Dr. Akagi is the kind of family doctor that Spencer Tracy might have played in a 1940s Hollywood film–if Hollywood doctors in those days had lived with prostitutes, befriended morphine addicts, sheltered escaped prisoners of war, and dug up bodies to remove their livers.”

About the Speaker

Gregory Hosho Abels is a Zen Teacher (Sensei) in the Soto White Plum Lineage of Taizan Maizumi Roshi and Co-Resident Teacher at Still Mind Zendo, 37 West 17^th Street. He is the author of Never Something Else, Poems from the Eye of Zen. For 51 years, he has enjoyed a career as an actor, stage director and Master Teacher of acting. He has two productions currently running: Roman Nights, which opened in Prague in 2006 and, Let It Be Art, which has played in 18 states and 22 countries. Last summer, he directed Love, Genius and a Walk, a play about Mahler, at the Manhattan International Theatre Festival. His dharma name, Hosho, loosely translated, means, ‘Voice of the Dharma’. He lives in Greenwich Village and the Hudson Valley.