The eldest son of Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa launched a new filmmaking school in his father's name in Tokyo Wednesday. The intimate new private school Kurosawa Akira Juku will take on 80 filmmaking students and 30 acting students starting this September. Hisao Kurosawa, a movie producer, will head the new facility, which aims to share the spirit of his father's filmmaking style with a new generation of Japanese moviemakers, while teaching them some of his basic techniques. The man behind such classics as The Seven Samurai and Rashomon died in 1998, but the school's two-year program will be taught by directors, cinematographers and other staff who worked with him...more...
Little-known Kurosawa trivia: he co-wrote the original script for the 1985 film Runaway Train. He planned to direct it himself in upstate NY but the project was shelved and then later revived and rewritten with a new director.
