Japan

  • Takashi Ito – 12-gatsu no kakurenbo AKA December Hide-and-Seek (1993)

    Takashi Ito1991-2000ExperimentalJapanShort Film

    Takashi Ito wrote:
    Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank.Read More »

  • Takashi Ito – Zone (1995)

    Takashi Ito1991-2000ExperimentalJapanShort Film

    This is a film about a man without a face. His arms and legs, bound with ropes, the disabled man is still without even a shudder in a white room. A series of unusual scenes in this room expresses what lies between memories, nightmares, and violent images.Read More »

  • Takashi Ito – Akuma no kairozu AKA Devil’s Circuit (1988)

    Takashi Ito1981-1990ExperimentalJapanShort Film

    Takashi Ito wrote:
    A film in which the one 60-story skyscraper that soars in the spaces between roofs spins with incredible speed. I centered the circumference with its 400 or 500 meter radius on the skyscraper and divided it into 48 sections, then took photographs from those spots and shot the photographs frame by frame.Read More »

  • Takashi Ito – Drill (1983)

    Takashi Ito1981-1990ExperimentalJapanShort Film

    Takashi Nakajima wrote:
    The filming of the entrance to the company dormitory in which the film-maker was living. Centering the film on one pillar, he warps the spaces to the left and right and creates an unstable space similar to painting that employs anamorphosis. Made as were SPACY and BOX with a large number of photographs, the film ends with a violent movement, but is poetic for this.Read More »

  • Takashi Ito – Venus (1990)

    Takashi Ito1981-1990ExperimentalJapanShort Film

    Takashi Ito wrote:
    In the early afternoon, a mother holding her child stands still in the park of a housing project. The kind of sight that is a symbol of beauty and love. Be as that may be, they have no face. The camera is aimed persistently at the spot from which they have vanished as if to find something. A work that began out of the search to understand the relation between the family and the self.Read More »

  • Shun Ikezoe – Jujuba (2019)

    2011-2020ExperimentalJapanShort FilmShun Ikezoe

    Shun Ikezoe wrote:
    People can never really understand each other. Thinking back, I feel this way because of my former mother-in-law. That time, when Kansai dialect and Sichuan Chinese flew back and forth around me and I called my mother Sis, is recreated on expired 8 millimeter film. The expiration date of the film used is the same year that she walked out on us.Read More »

  • Masahiro Shinoda – Akuryo-To AKA Island of the Evil Spirits (1981)

    Masahiro Shinoda1981-1990AsianJapanMystery

    Famous detective Kosuke Kindaichi follows a dying man’s words to an enigmatic island, where he meets beautiful twin sisters and tragic events unfold.Read More »

  • Masaki Kobayashi – Kaseki (1975)

    Masaki Kobayashi1971-1980ArthouseDramaJapan

    This drama is adapted from a Japanese television mini-series. In the story, an industrialist learns of a medical condition which will greatly shorten his life. He is on a trip to Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to fantasize about her as the personification of his impending death. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he actually meets the living woman who is the template for his fantasy, and together they tour rural churches. Gradually he comes to some kind of peace about the diagnosis. When he returns to Japan, he is met with a series of challenges which profoundly test the lessons he has learned.Read More »

  • Yoshihiko Okamoto – Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai AKA I Want to Be a Shellfish (1958)

    1951-1960DramaJapanTVYoshihiko Okamoto

    On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation by GHQ, Toyomatsu “attemped to kill a US prisoner”, which was nothing but an order by his superior and failed after all with hurting the prisoner by weak Toyomatsu. Also, Toyomatsu was driven to corner at the trial by the fact that he fed the US prisoner some burdock roots to nourish him. Toyomatsu believes nothing but being not guilty, but he is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to the execution, Toyomatsu writes a long farewell letter to his family, the wife and the only son: “If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more…. Oh yes, I would like to be…a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea.”Read More »

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