The Kurosawa Digital Archive

Our col­lec­tion of Free Online Movies is the gift that keeps on giv­ing. It led us unex­pect­ed­ly to dis­cov­er the wealth of World War II pro­pa­gan­da films made by some of Amer­i­ca’s great­est direc­tors. It also turned up (among oth­er things) the Kuro­sawa Dig­i­tal Archive. Opened last year by Kyoto’s Ryukoku Uni­ver­si­ty, the archive hon­ors Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Japan’s cel­e­brat­ed film­mak­er who brought us The Sev­en Samu­rai, Rashomon, Ikiru, etc. and won an Oscar for Life­time Achieve­ment in 1989. What will you find here? A good 20,000 items. Screen­plays, man­u­scripts, pho­tos, sketch­es, news­pa­per clip­pings, notes, etc. You won’t find a larg­er Kuro­sawa col­lec­tion on the web. The one down­side is that you’ll need to read Japan­ese to take full advan­tage of the archive. But even if you have no Japan­ese under your belt, you can still surf the site, click on ran­dom links, and expe­ri­ence a good deal of what the archive offers.