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A hugely revered, popular filmmaker in his home country of Japan, Yoshitaro Nomura's (1919 – 2005) film career spanned more than 50 years during which he directed 89 films.

Nomura poured his heart and soul into Stakeout, a stylish mystery in which two Tokyo detectives come to sympathise with those on whom they’re spying.

A sophisticated tale of an unlikely romance between two extraordinary artists, set against the backdrop of political upheaval and a clash of cultures.

Almost 40 years before Girls and Frances Ha made a phenomenon out of a brand of New York neurosis that is distinctly female, debut director Claudia Weill wrote and directed this woefully neglected gem about Susan, a struggling photographer who is forced to fend for herself when her roommate Anne decides to get married.

A satirical, wild and irreverent story of rebellion, Věra Chytilová’s classic of surrealist cinema is perhaps also the most adventurous and anarchic Czech movie of the 1960s.

Zero Focus has the most overtly film noir stylings of all Nomura’s films, and is the one most clearly indebted to Alfred Hitchcock, with a dual-identity plot and elevated showdowns reminiscent of both Vertigo and Rebecca.

This collaboration between Detroit techno wizard Jeff Mills and French filmmaker Jacqueline Caux is less of a traditional portrait of Mills’ music and life, but more a playfully dream-like journey through his oeuvre, ideas and imagination. Followed by a Q&A with Jeff Mills and director Jacqueline Caux.

Adapted from a 1961 Matsumoto story, The Shadow Within is a sometimes lurid psychological drama about an emasculated husband, Yukio, and an affair with a childhood friend.

The film for which Nomura will be forever most associated, The Castle of Sand is a sprawling, twisting police procedural that criss-crosses rural Japan and uncovers a tragic story of anger and discrimination, in search of the solution to a murder mystery.

Join the ICA Student Forum in the first part of a series of free contemporary art theory reading groups that respond to the ICA’s programme of exhibitions and events.