Hiroshi Teshigahara

Japanese avant-garde film director, New Wave artist, painter, calligrapher and ikebana grandmaster (28 January 1927, Chiyoda, Tokyo — 14 April 2001, Tokyo). Hiroshi Teshigahara (勅使河原 宏) is widely regarded among the most acclaimed Japanese film directors of all time; he was the first filmmaker of Asian descent to be nominated for the Academy Award's "Best Director" Oscar. Teshigahara's best-known films are '64 Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna) and The Face of Another (1966), based on eponymous Kobo Abe's novels. He was married to an actress Toshiko Kobayashi (1932—2016). Hiroshi Teshigahara was born to the family of Sōfu Teshigahara (1900—1979), a distinguished ikebana grandmaster and founder of the original Sōgetsu-ryū school. In 1950, he graduated from the Tokyo National University Of Fine Arts And Music and began his career as a documentary filmmaker. Teshigahara's debut feature-length film, Pitfall, came out in 1962, marking the first of several fruitful collaborations with novelist Kōbō Abe (1924—1993) and film composer Toru Takemitsu (1930—1996). Two years later, Hiroshi directed Suna no Onna (1964), based on Abe's novel Woman in the Dunes, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival. (Teshigahara was nominated for the "Palme d'Or" and won the "Special Jury Prize" award). In 1980, following his father's death, Hiroshi Teshigahara became the 3rd generation Iemoto (家元), a traditional grandmaster of Sōgetsu ikebana school. Teshigahara had several large-scale solo exhibitions at Palazzo Reale Milano (Italy), John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts (USA) and other prominent museums. He later adopted various installation art disciplines, including renka and calligraphy on ceramics. In 1989, Teshigahara directed Rikyû historical drama, which earned him awards from Montréal and Berlin Film Festivals. Hiroshi premiered an original "Noh" play, Susanoh, at the 1994 Avignon Theatre Festival and staged Puccini's Turandot opera on several occasions in France and Switzerland in the 1990s.