KASEKI

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1975 Masaki Kobayashi Japanese Drama KASEKI (THE FOSSIL), based on the novel by Yasushi Inoue and starring Shin Saburi, Mayumi Ogawa, Keiko Kishi, Komaki Kurihara, Haruko Sugimura and Hisashi Igawa.

In this story, an industrialist learns of a medical condition which will greatly shorten his life. He is on a trip to Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to fantasize about her as the personification of his impending death. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he actually meets the living woman who is the template for his fantasy, and together they tour rural churches. Gradually he comes to some kind of peace about the diagnosis. When he returns to Japan, he is met with a series of challenges which profoundly test the lessons he has learned.

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld. Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980.

The Academy Cinema, built in 1913, was saved from conversion to a shopping arcade in 1928 by Elsie Cohen of the original Film Society, who proceeded to run it as an arthouse which is how it was ran till it’s closure in 1986.

The posters became a London landmark, in fact very few were used outside of London, resulting in very small print runs of 3-500.

Printed by Ward & Foxlow Ltd., 19 Harcourt Street, London W1H 2AX

The poster is in fine unfolded (rolled) condition.