Synopsis:
Based on a girl’s prize-winning school essay on the subject of “My Mother”. Mizuki Yoko fashioned one of her most moving scripts. Upon the death of her husband the mother (Tanaka Kinuyo) runs the family laundry by herself. She is helped by her first daughter (Kagawa Kyoko) bust must send her second daughter to live with relatives because she cannot afford to keep her. A real shomingeki with lots of heart
— Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film.Read More »
Based on the life of movie director Keisuke Kinoshita.
As a young man, Keisuke Kinoshita (Ryo Kase) carried his mother on a handcart across a mountain. He grew up as a hotblooded young man and was monitored by the military. He then joined Shochiku movie company, to eventually become a movie director.Read More »
Synopsis
Through the microcosmic perspectivising of a group of devoted and uncompromising IPTA workers, Ghatak with his signature style touches on varied issues of partition, idealism, corruption, the interdependence of art and life, the scope of art, and class-struggle.Read More »
Japanese Title: 森と湖のまつり
quote:One of the major joys of writing about Japanese movies is that whenever you begin to get that tired, jaded feeling that you think you’ve seen it all and that there’s nothing left that’s ever going to set your pulse racing, you stumble across a whole previously hidden seam of movies that completely revolutionises any ideas of what Japanese cinema is. I remember getting this feeling watching the works of Hiroshi Shimizu at the 2003 Tokyo FILMeX, and I got it again at the same festival exactly one year later, during a 13-film retrospective of Tomu Uchida, which travelled to the Rotterdam Film Festival in a slimmed-down version a couple of months later.Read More »
review:
*** might contain spoilers ***
Story: After being convinced by his friend Ishii, Asai decides to take part in a fixed
underground Thai-Boxing fight as a last minute replacement. The deal is simple; convince
the crowd that he is in fact a Muay Thaï champion from Thailand, which should be
miraculous considering the fact that he has no experience, and get knock out on the
second round. However, an unexpected incident during the fight turns the event into total
chaos.Read More »
A young man with a strong sense of justice is torn between two girls: the flighty Taneko and the serious Suzuko.Read More »
Quote:
I haven’t watched it yet and there seems to be very little information available, but from what I understand, it’s a bleak story of two alienated youths (Morishita Aiko and Nagashima Toshiyuki) preoccupied with entrance exams and suicide. In short, the kind of thing one might expect from Nakagami and Fujita Toshiya.Read More »
The Catch 飼育 (1961) : Based on a prize-winning novella by Kenzaburo Oe -– Oshima removes the homoeroticism of the source but adds his typical touch of incestuous desire –- The Catch is set during the final days of World War II. A black GI is captured in a remote Japanese farming village, and becomes a pawn in a power struggle between various factions. As the villagers squabble over their “catch,” Oshima explores subjects that would become his hallmarks – Japanese hypocrisy, racism, xenophobia, insularity, scapegoating – with detached ferocity.Read More »
Synopsis
A movie about making a movie. A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It’s a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India.
Awards:
National Award 1981 – Golden Lotus (Best Film)
Berlin Film Festival 1981 – Silver Bear.Read More »