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Intellect

Summer Samurai Film Festival under way at Kennedy Center

Brigham Young University's International Outreach, a three-credit service-learning course, will sponsor five Samurai movies during July and August.

They will be screened Thursdays at noon in 238 Herald R. Clark Building (the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies)..

Viewers will "witness stark conflicts of loyalty versus duty, Sheakespearean power plays and contemporary social criticism in period guise," according to the Kennedy Center.

The schedule for this "Summer Samurai Film Festival" is as follows:

13 July

The Twilight Samurai (2002)

Yoji Yamada, director

This moving family drama in nineteenth-century Japan is muted and somber—about an aging samurai, like the "gunfighter" film Unforgiven.

20 July

Yojimbo (1961)

Akira Kurosawa, director

A genre-twisting gangster western, the film is both visually stunning and darkly comic.

27 July

The Sword of Doom (1966)

Kihachi Okamoto, director

This action-filled classic features an aficionado's favorite "all-against-one" swordfight.

3 August

Samurai Jack (premiere, 2002)

Genndy Tartakovsky, director

Bid farewell to the samurai genre through a visually inventive cartoon adventure.

For more information on Kennedy Center events, see the calendar online at kennedy.byu.edu.

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