Japan

  • Kazuhiro Sôda – Engeki 2 AKA Theatre 2 (2012)

    2011-2020DocumentaryJapanKazuhiro Soda

    Can the theatre arts survive in the 21st century?

    If Theatre 1 is about the world of Hirata, Theatre 2 is a feature documentary, which depicts the relationship between Hirata and the world we live in. In order for his art and his not-so-commercial company to survive this highly capitalistic modern society, what kind of strategy does Hirata have and practice?Read More »

  • Gakuryû Ishii – Enjeru dasuto aka Angel Dust (1994)

    1991-2000AsianCrimeGakuryû IshiiJapan

    Every Monday at 6 pm a young woman is murdered in the subway. The psychiatrist Setsuko Suma is called in to assist the police. The trail leads to another psychiatrist – Dr Rei Aku – who Setsuko used to date. As she get closer to the solution, she gets more and more convinced that Aku’s deprogramming of former sectmembers is important.Read More »

  • Kazuhiro Sôda – Peace (2010)

    2001-2010DocumentaryJapanKazuhiro SodaPolitics

    What is peace? What is coexistence? And what are the basis for them? PEACE is a visual-essay-like observational documentary, which contemplates these questions by observing the daily lives of people and cats in Okayama city, Japan, where life and death, acceptance and rejection are intermingled.Read More »

  • Shinji Sômai – Kaza-hana (2000)

    1991-2000AsianDramaJapanShinji Sômai

    A haunting tale of destiny and life’s unpredictability: an elite bureaucrat, humbled by an incident which ruined his promising career, has a chance encounter with a glamorous hostess, heartbroken by her husband’s death.Read More »

  • Yasujirô Ozu – Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka AKA What Did the Lady Forget? (1937)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyJapanYasujiro Ozu

    Synopsis:
    An affluent medical professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokio, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Setsuko is a liberated woman who does what she wants, including smoking, even though she is a minor. On Saturday, the professor does not feel like going to his weekend golf game, but his wife packs him off anyway. So he leaves his bag at the apartment of his student Okada, and goes to a bar with a friend. Setsuko traces him there, and insists that he take her to a geisha house. When she gets rather tipsy, the professor calls Okada to take her home, while he sleeps at Okada’s. The wife becomes suspicious of Setsuko when she sees Okada bringing her home, and also of her husband when she discovers that he did not go golfing.Read More »

  • Shirô Moritani – Hakkodasan aka Mount Hakkoda (1977)

    1971-1980DramaEpicJapanShirô Moritani

    Isolde Standish:
    With the change in the aesthetic of the yakuza genre that occurred in the 1970s towards the realist style of the innovator Fukasaku Kinji ‘jitsuroku’ film series, the ninkyo ethic of the 1960s films again shifted genre. After the great success of the three-part epic War and Humanity (Senso to ningen), based on the six-part novel by Gomikawa Junpei (1916-1995) and released by Nikkatsu between 1970 and 1973, epics based on the war or military themes became increasingly popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s.Read More »

  • Kôji Wakamatsu – Nihon bôkô ankokushi: Ijôsha no chi AKA Abnormal Blood (1967)

    1961-1970CrimeExploitationJapanKoji Wakamatsu

    Synopsis: A detective investigating a serial rapist discovers that he and the perpetrator come from the same lineage of depraved individuals, a genealogy of violent and sexually perverse deviants that streches through the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras and can even be traced back to the Edo era.Read More »

  • Kôji Fukada – Hotori no Sakuko AKA Au revoir l’été (2013)

    2011-2020DramaJapanKôji Fukada

    Quote:
    Sakuko is an 18 year old student, who travels with her aunt to Mikie from Tokyo to a seaside town where they plan to housesit for the summer. Mikie is working on an academic project and Sakuko is preparing for her university entrance exams.

    But the summer days move slowly and Sakuko soon makes a friend, Takashi, a simple young lad who was sent to the town as a refugee from Fukushima and the Great East Japan Earthquake. Takashi has dropped out of school and works at love-motel managed by Ukichi, a old friend of Mikie.Read More »

  • Kinji Fukasaku – Omocha AKA The Geisha House (1998)

    1991-2000AsianDramaJapanKinji Fukasaku

    Set in the late 1950s, when geisha culture was threatened by moral crusades, it tells the story of Omacha (Miyamoto Maki), a young girl who sees the geisha life as a way to lift her poverty-stricken family from their hand-to-mouth existence. Through her eyes, we see the protocols and complex financial relationships which dictate the running of the geisha house. Fukasaku’s film is a work of great delicacy with moments of hypnotic beauty, and his tender direction, often touched with a sense of wonder, fills the screen with lovingly constructed scenes. At its heart is the poignant situation of the women who must sacrifice their normal relationships to live an ambiguous life in which they are a key part of society while being kept, for the most part, on its periphery, like perpetual mistresses.Read More »

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