Shohei Imamura

  • Shôhei Imamura – Hateshinaki yokubô AKA Endless Desire (1958)

    1951-1960Film NoirJapanShohei ImamuraThriller

    Synopsis:
    On 15 August 1955 at noon, on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender, five people gather outside a train station, each of them wearing the emblem of the former imperial army on their chest. On the day of the surrender, an army general had hidden a can of priceless morphin in an air-raid shelter. It had been agreed then that the general and his three soldiers would meet ten years later to share their loot. Outside the station there is now one person too many. What’s more, one of them is a woman who claims she was married to the now dead general. The four men and the woman hire a house, aiming to turn it into a real estate agency. They start digging the ground to reach the spot where the can was buried. As their work progresses, each of them becomes a victim of their own selfishness, distrust and greed.Read More »

  • Shohei Imamura – Ningen Johatsu aka A Man Vanishes [+Extras] (1967)

    1961-1970DocumentaryDramaJapanShohei Imamura

    Synopsis
    Ostensibly Imamura’s first work in documentary features, A Man Vanishes is much more, heralding the future work of Kazuo Hara and Werner Herzog, amongst others, in the genre-defying mix of style and loose adherence to filmic “reality.” Imamura follows one case of a growing phenomenon of working Japanese men who, sent to other cities while their families are left behind, disappear completely. The film concerns Yoshie Hayakawa, whose fiancée vanishes from sight, leaving behind only shadowy evidence of his past, casting darkness over Hayakawa’s relationship with her sister, her fiancée’s family, and even the investigator, who himself may not be what he seems to be.Read More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Erogotoshi-tachi yori: Jinruigaku nyûmon AKA The Pornographers (1966)

    Arthouse1961-1970ComedyJapanShohei Imamura

    Synopsis:
    Mr. Ogata lives a complicated life: he is a pornographer making two skin flicks per day and trying to stay beneath the radar screen of the local mob; he deeply loves his ailing wife Haru who’s cursed by the restless spirit of her dead first husband; he also has a mistress, a step-son who wants to go to university, and a step-daughter entering adolescence. He lusts after his step-daughter, and when Haru finds out about those sexual advances, she asks him to marry the girl. Haru even signs over her business to him, and a crisis ensues when Ogata uses her nest egg to buy equipment so he and his pals can set up their own film processing lab. Surreal images and events weave their way into Ogata’s life.Read More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Nippon konchûki AKA The Insect Woman (1963)

    Drama1961-1970ClassicsJapanShohei Imamura

    Synopsis:
    Tome is born into poverty in rural Japan, in the late 1910s. Chuji, her father, dotes on her; her mother is less faithful. Tome becomes a neighbor’s mistress, works at his mill as World War II rages, and has a daughter. After an affair with a mill supervisor, Tome goes to Tokyo to seek her fortune. She leaves the child, Nobuko, in Chuji’s care. Tome’s a maid at a brothel, learns trade from the madam, enjoys the protection of a businessman whose mistress she becomes, and is soon herself the boss. As Chuji ages and Nobuko grows up with her own ideas, can Tome’s self-preserving schemes provide continued comfort? Or will the mice scamper over her?Read More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Fukushû suru wa ware ni ari AKA Vengeance Is Mine (1979)

    1971-1980CrimeDramaJapanShohei Imamura

    Synopsis:
    Vengeance Is Mine is the come-back feature of master Shohei Imamura after a 10 year hiatus. The film is based on a real-life serial killer who went on a killing spree across Japan in the 60s.Read More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Buban No Kaizoku AKA The Pirates of Bubuan (1972)

    1971-1980DocumentaryJapanShohei ImamuraTV

    Quote:
    Imamura reveals remote and impoverished islands in the Philippines to be the home of rival factions of pirates in this absorbing investigation into a little-known way of life.

    “In ballsy, proto-Nick Broomfield fashion, Shohei Imamura puts himself directly in the line of danger to film THE PIRATES OF BUBUAN, a startling documentary glimpse of shady activity on the Phillipine high seas in the early 1970s. As an unintended side effect of bringing a camera crew into relatively unknown territory, Imamura also captures the experiences of native islanders eking out their day-to-day lives on both the poverty line and the idyllic shoreline.” —The CinefamilyRead More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Nippon Sengoshi – Madamu onboro no Seikatsu AKA Postwar History of Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (1970) (DVD)

    1961-1970DocumentaryJapanShohei ImamuraWar

    Quote:
    The star of this documentary is a quintessential Imamura heroine: a hard-nosed, ruthless survivor, with a sense of loyalty and an earthy sense of humor. In this movie, she sits in a Tokyo bar, which she used to own, and tells the story of the various means she used to survive, beginning with the day the atom bomb fell. It is a history of compromises and hard deeds, though there are few outright betrayals.Read More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Muhomatsu kokyo e kaeru AKA Muhomatsu Returns Home (1973)

    1971-1980DocumentaryJapanShohei ImamuraWar

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    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    From the BFI website:

    Television documentary featuring interviews with Japanese soldiers after the Second World War.

    Quote:
    “In Search of Unreturned Soldiers was about former soldiers of the Japanese army who chose not to return to Japan after the war. I found several of them who had remained in Thailand. Two years later, I invited one of them to make his first return visit to Japan and documented it in Muhomatsu Returns Home. During the filming, my subject Fujita asked me to buy him a cleaver so that he could kill his ‘vicious brother.’ I was shocked, and asked him to wait a day so that I could plan how to film the scene. By the next morning, to my relief, Fujita had calmed down and changed his mind about killing his brother. But I couldn’t have had a sharper insight into the ethical questions provoked by this kind of documentary filmmaking.” —Shôhei ImamuraRead More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Karayuki-san AKA The Making of a Prostitute (1975)

    1971-1980DocumentaryJapanShohei ImamuraTV

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    A film about another kind of “unreturned soldier” than Shohei Imamura has profiled elsewhere, KARAYUKI-SAN finds the filmmaker traveling to Malaysia to interview Kikuyo Zendo, one of the countless Japanese women who were kidnapped or otherwise sold into sexual slavery in order to service the Japanese military in Southeast Asia.

    74 years old at the time of filming, she offers a frank and harrowing testimony into her horrific wartime experiences, and the factors that have led her to choose exile over repatriation.Read More »

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