Ryuichi Sakamoto Tribute: 'async surround'

Admission to the Billy Wilder Theater is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Shosho ni mitsu

Japan, 2017

Digital video, color, 5 min. Director: J. K. Wang.

Poetry of Banality

Russia, 2017

Digital video, color, 4 min. Director: Mikhail Basov.

In a Happy Place

India, 2018

Digital video, color, 7 min. Director: Sandup Rongkup.

async-first light

Thailand, 2017

Digital video, color, 11 min. Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

async surround

2018

Digital video, color, 84 min. Director: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shiro Takatani.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

Whether as an international pop star, music producer or composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto was always an innovator. In the late 1970s, as a member of the Japanese techno pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto helped pioneer electronic music with the band’s influence extending well into the present day. As a prolific solo artist, Sakamoto expressed his own wide-ranging influences, from Debussy to John Cage to Balinese gamelan, moving between and blending melodic, experimental and ambient forms across an eclectic discography that defined and transformed world music. In 1983, with no prior experience, he composed his first film score for Nagisa Ôshima’sMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence(1983) (in which he also made his screen debut), a groundbreaking electronic work that spawned a hit single and earned Sakamoto a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. Other film scores followed, including his Oscar-winning contribution to Bernardo Bertolucci’sThe Last Emperor(1989), Pedro Almodóvar’sHigh Heels(1991) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’sThe Revenant(2016). Sakamoto spent his career exploring the intersections of music, sound, images and technology. The Archive presents this three-night tribute, understanding that it captures only a fragment of Sakamoto’s boundless creative spirit.

Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities