Takashi Miike
| Takashi Miike | |
|---|---|
Miike at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival
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| Native name | 三池 崇史 |
| Born |
August 24, 1960 Yao, Osaka, Japan |
| Occupation | Director, producer, writer, actor |
| Years active | 1991–present |
Takashi Miike (三池 崇史 Miike Takashi?, born August 24, 1960) is a highly prolific and controversial Japanese filmmaker. He has directed over ninety theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. Miike is credited with directing fifteen productions in the years 2001 and 2002 alone. His films range from violent and bizarre to dramatic and family-friendly.
Miike was born to Korean parents in Yao, Osaka, Japan, an area inhabited by the poor working class immigrants from the Korean Peninsula. His family originally emigrated to Kumamoto Prefecture. During World War II, his grandfather was stationed in China and Korea, and his father was born in Seoul in today's South Korea. His father worked as a welder and his mother as seamstress. Although he claimed to have attended classes only rarely, he graduated from Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film (Yokohama Hōsō Eiga Senmon Gakkō) under the guidance of renowned filmmaker Shohei Imamura, the founder and Dean of that institution.
Miike's first films were television productions, but he also began directing several direct-to-video V-Cinema releases. Miike still directs V-Cinema productions intermittently due to the creative freedom afforded by the less stringent censorship of the medium and the riskier content that the producers will allow.
Miike's theatrical debut was the film The Third Gangster (Daisan no gokudō). However it was Shinjuku Triad Society (1995) that was the first of his theatrical releases to gain public attention. The film showcased his extreme style and his recurring themes, and its success gave him the freedom to work on higher-budgeted pictures. Shinjuku Triad Society is also the first film in what is labeled his "Black Society Trilogy", which also includes Rainy Dog (1997) and Ley Lines (1999). He gained international fame in 2000 when his romantic horror film Audition (1999), his violent yakuza epic Dead or Alive (1999), and his controversial adaptation of the manga Ichi the Killer played at international film festivals. He has since gained a strong cult following in the West that is growing with the increase in DVD releases of his works. His film Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai premiered In Competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. His 2013 film Straw Shield was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
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