Suzuki, Seijun

Birth place: Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan

Died: February 13, 2017

Seijun Suzuki is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool, and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his dismissal for what is now regarded as his magnum opus, Branded to Kill (1967). Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but was blacklisted from movies for 10 years. During this time, he was active as a writer and television director, for series including the anime Lupin III: Part II. In his later career as an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his Taishō Trilogy (released between 1980 and 1991).

(Source: Wikipedia)