Akira Kurosawa (March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998), a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, considered one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa launched his career as a director in 1943 with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a. K. A. Judo Saga). In 1948 Kurosawa casted the then-unknown actor Toshirō Mifune in a starring role in Drunken Angel, a movie which put Kurosawa on the list of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films. Rashomon ( 1950), which also starred Mifune, earned Kurosawa the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and opened up Western film markets for the first time to the Japanese film industry. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly successful films such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). In 1990, he received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.