AFS Series on Oshima Nagisa Starts This Week

Austin Film Society is rolling out a new Essential Cinema series starting on Tuesday night: "Smashing the Rules: Films of Oshima Nagisa." The films span a nearly 20-year period in the Japanese director's career. The most notorious in the series is probably the 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses -- I remember being shocked in college when someone told me about a certain explicit scene. But as AFS Director of Programming Nafus tells us, "Every one of his films is like a roller coaster ride through the subterranean areas of the human psyche."

All the films in the Essential Cinema series are on Tuesday nights at 7 pm at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. (Notice the series skips a week during SXSW.) You can get tickets online through the AFS site. While admission is free for AFS members, definitely get your tickets in advance because Essential Cinema screenings tend to fill up quickly. I've listed the films after the jump.

Here are the films in the series:

• 2/23: In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
• 3/2: Empire of Passion (1978)
• 3/9: Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967)
• 3/23: The Pleasures of the Flesh (1965)
• 3/30: Violence at Noon (1966)
• 4/7: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)