Festival ’90 : MOVIE REVIEWS : Vivid South American Images

More than 100 films and videos representing 25 Pacific Rim cultures are being screened through Sunday. Highlights of programs today and Thursday are reviewed here:

Thursday

Ugetsu

Japan Airs Thursday on KCET-TV Channel 28 at 10 p.m. There are images in Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 “Ugetsu,” one of the most famous and celebrated of all Japanese films, that linger in the memory for a lifetime--most notably, that of a man and a woman enjoying a picnic in a meadow. The woman, however, is a beautiful, aristocratic ghost (Machiko Kyo) while the man is but a humble potter (Masayuki Mori), whose loyal wife is played by Kinuyo Tanaka. Interwoven in this struggle is Mizoguchi’s characteristic concern for the battle between creativity and destruction. As usual in a Mizoguchi film, women are the true central figures, and Mizoguchi is as masterful a director of actresses as was George Cukor.