22 October – 13 December 2026
Long Takes
"I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself."
– Shōhei Imamura
"Imamura has given the world of cinema images that can be found nowhere else."
– Audie Bock
One of the most important filmmakers to emerge in Japan’s post-war era, Shōhei Imamura’s unruly, inventive, and often anthropological approach to cinema, is singular in the medium’s history. As he was so often apt to point out, he held little interest or love for the class he was raised in, nor for the idealised images of his country produced in the aftermath of WWII. Instead, Imamura’s admiration and curiosity lay with the working class and the people that official histories so easily and readily forget.
Born in Tokyo in 1926, the third son of a middle-class family, Imamura enrolled at Waseda University to study Western History, but quickly began neglecting his studies in favour of student theatre and radical politics. Emperor Hirohito’s radio address announcing Japan’s defeat in WWII proved to be a watershed moment for the young Imamura, in his words “suddenly everything became free”. Imamura embraced this freedom first hand, making his living from the flourishing black markets by buying illicit cigarettes and liquor from American GIs to sell to his professors, and spending much of his time hanging around with the pimps, sex workers, and petty gangsters for whom the market represented a means of survival.
While his experiences during these years would dramatically shape the films he would go on to make less than a decade later, Imamura would ultimately depart his black market endeavours (at least officially), first to graduate university and then to pursue his long-held passion for drama by entering Shochiku’s assistant director programme. Over the next few years Imamura would serve brief but influential apprenticeships with two iconic filmmakers. The first with Yasujirō Ozu, whose formal mastery even the brash young Imamura couldn’t deny, but whose regimented approach to directing his actors rubbed him entirely the wrong way, was unsurprisingly short-lived. It was under the mentorship of Yūzō Kawashima, however, that Imamura found a more enduring influence. Kawashima's irreverence, humour, and fascination with society's outsiders offered a model from which Imamura could proceed with reckless abandon.
Spanning more than five decades, Imamura’s body of work traces an alternative history of a nation, one that emerges not from textbooks or official decrees, but from the very character of its people. Endlessly animated by the clash between the primitive and the civilised, Imamura’s cinema revels in the messiness of life, from its vulgarity to its profundity, doing so with a formal approach that is as unruly as it is rigorous. At once exuberant, irreverent and profoundly human, Imamura's cinema reminds us that history is not only written from above but lived from below.
As Imamura himself once said: “What is a human being? I look for the answer by continuing to make films."
The ICA is delighted to present the first major retrospective of Shohei Imamura’s work in the UK in more than twenty-five years. This comprehensive retrospective includes new restorations, rarely seen works, contextualising screenings, guest introductions, and will be accompanied by the publication of a monograph dedicated to Shohei Imamura’s work, featuring newly commissioned essays, archive material, interviews and more.
Further information about the monograph will be announced in due course.
Long Takes
"I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself."
– Shōhei Imamura
"Imamura has given the world of cinema images that can be found nowhere else."
– Audie Bock
One of the most important filmmakers to emerge in Japan’s post-war era, Shōhei Imamura’s unruly, inventive, and often anthropological approach to cinema, is singular in the medium’s history. As he was so often apt to point out, he held little interest or love for the class he was raised in, nor for the idealised images of his country produced in the aftermath of WWII. Instead, Imamura’s admiration and curiosity lay with the working class and the people that official histories so easily and readily forget.
Born in Tokyo in 1926, the third son of a middle-class family, Imamura enrolled at Waseda University to study Western History, but quickly began neglecting his studies in favour of student theatre and radical politics. Emperor Hirohito’s radio address announcing Japan’s defeat in WWII proved to be a watershed moment for the young Imamura, in his words “suddenly everything became free”. Imamura embraced this freedom first hand, making his living from the flourishing black markets by buying illicit cigarettes and liquor from American GIs to sell to his professors, and spending much of his time hanging around with the pimps, sex workers, and petty gangsters for whom the market represented a means of survival.
While his experiences during these years would dramatically shape the films he would go on to make less than a decade later, Imamura would ultimately depart his black market endeavours (at least officially), first to graduate university and then to pursue his long-held passion for drama by entering Shochiku’s assistant director programme. Over the next few years Imamura would serve brief but influential apprenticeships with two iconic filmmakers. The first with Yasujirō Ozu, whose formal mastery even the brash young Imamura couldn’t deny, but whose regimented approach to directing his actors rubbed him entirely the wrong way, was unsurprisingly short-lived. It was under the mentorship of Yūzō Kawashima, however, that Imamura found a more enduring influence. Kawashima's irreverence, humour, and fascination with society's outsiders offered a model from which Imamura could proceed with reckless abandon.
Spanning more than five decades, Imamura’s body of work traces an alternative history of a nation, one that emerges not from textbooks or official decrees, but from the very character of its people. Endlessly animated by the clash between the primitive and the civilised, Imamura’s cinema revels in the messiness of life, from its vulgarity to its profundity, doing so with a formal approach that is as unruly as it is rigorous. At once exuberant, irreverent and profoundly human, Imamura's cinema reminds us that history is not only written from above but lived from below.
As Imamura himself once said: “What is a human being? I look for the answer by continuing to make films."
The ICA is delighted to present the first major retrospective of Shohei Imamura’s work in the UK in more than twenty-five years. This comprehensive retrospective includes new restorations, rarely seen works, contextualising screenings, guest introductions, and will be accompanied by the publication of a monograph dedicated to Shohei Imamura’s work, featuring newly commissioned essays, archive material, interviews and more.
Further information about the monograph will be announced in due course.
Become a Member
Full programme announced 10am, Tuesday 8 September
Priority booking for Members opens 10am, Tuesday 8 September
General booking opens 10am, Tuesday 15 September
