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Best known in the West for the abstract and beautiful Woman of the Dunes (1964), Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara began his career in the film industry as a critic. The son of a noted painter, Teshigahara also studied painting. In the early '50s, he began making documentary shorts. He made his feature-film directorial debut in 1961 with The Pitfall/Kashi to Kodomo, a self-described "documentary fantasy." Woman of the Dunes earned Teshigahara two Oscar nominations and the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964. He subsequently returned to more poetic, abstract fare such as Rikyu (1989), a meditation on the origins of the Japanese tea ceremony.