Professor Emeritus of the Akira Kurosawa School of Film

Dr. David Desser has taught at the University of Southern California (USC), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Kansai University in Japan, Hong Kong Baptist University and the University of Illinois where he is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies. He received his Ph.D. from USC in the Cinema program with a minor in Japanese. Dr. Desser was the founding Dean of the Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film and developed the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Digital Filmmaking program. 

• He is the author of The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa and Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema
• Co-author of American Jewish Filmmakers
• Editor of Ozu’s Tokyo Story (Cambridge Film Handbooks)
• Co-editor of The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity; Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History; Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts of China and Japan; Hollywood Goes Shopping; and Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience.
• Published more than fifty essays in scholarly collections and journals
• Created DVD commentary for the Criterion Edition of Tokyo Story and Seven Samurai.
• Former editor of Cinema Journal, and the co-editor of The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.