An expressionistic look at the ballet world focusing on the rigid relationship between artist and teacher until a young composer brings the ballerina back to reality. Ground-breaking at the time in its use of colour and movement and made more intriguing by its real-life model of Nijinsky/Diaghilev.

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When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...