After Dersu Uzala was Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior), winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or in 1980, and Ran (Chaos, 1985), an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear which won him an Academy Award nomination for best director - a feat almost unheard of for a foreign-language film.

CNN: Kurosawa Akira

He entered Parliament in 1970, a Bennite class-warrior, joining Labour's shadow cabinet as a transport spokesman in 1979.

BBC: The John Prescott story