Gojira (Godzilla) (1954)

Some knowledge should never be born.

Released just nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this is Japan's post-war trauma made flesh: the ultimate monster, born of nuclear fire, impossible to outrun, indifferent to human existence.

This is the film as director Ishirō Honda intended. Stripped of the dubbed dialogue and additional footage which softened it for US audiences, the original cut is something far darker – what happens when humanity's hubris comes back to bite? A question so powerful, it spawned an ongoing global franchise that refuses to die, remaining as relevant as ever.

With introduction by Professor Danielle Celermajer, Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney, and author of Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future (2021).

Directed by Ishirō Honda, Japan, 1954, 96 min, M.
Starring: Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura.
Remastered in 4K. In Japanese with English subtitles.

“The message is that the arms race is never-ending, there's always going to be a bigger threat around the corner, we're always facing our own annihilation, and it will be at our own hands.” – Steven Sloss, interviewed for the BBC