Labor Goes to the Movies

Twenty-Four Eyes (Keisuke Kinoshita, Japan, 1954)
Unfairly neglected in the West, this film quickly became, on its release in 1954, one of the most awarded films in Japanese history. Directed by the prolific Keisuke Kinoshita, the film traces the close relation between a young teacher and her twelve students (2 eyes each) over the course of twenty years, spanning the period of world-wide economic collapse and World War II. Set in a farming community on an island in Japan’s inland sea, the film tackles head-on issues of class, war and peace, and the tensions between a teacher’s concerns for her students and the Japanese educational institution’s acquiescence in the tradition of militarism..