After Summer, Ogawa Pro attempted a more epic scale with Winter in Sanrizuka. It was roundly criticised as a failure. In the wake of this criticism, the collective became increasingly militant. They decided to make a quick and dirty report from the front, calling it a “bullet film.” They shot this agit-prop film in three days, when 2,500 protestors battled 6,500 police. Even the school had been let out so children could participate in the action.Read More »
Quote:
Takeshi is a gardener and likes to take pictures of people he passes. One day, on a train platform, he takes a picture of a woman just before she falls on the tracks. Is it murder or suicide? Takeshi gets acquainted with the victim’s daughter.Read More »
Quote:
Shot in the foothills of Iwate Prefecture’s mystical Mt. Hayachine, the film records a year in the life of the area’s villages and villagers as they prepare for kagura performances, a dance-theater form with origins in religious rituals (now mainly performed for tourists). The film can be enjoyed and processed on many levels: a musicologist’s fascinating glimpse into kagura traditions and performances; an ethnographic portrait of rural life and village hierarchies; and most of all, a study of a key moment in Japanese society, when, even as Haneda filmed, rural lifestyles were exposed to modernity: paved roads, cars, and tv sets. Fittingly, the film’s true beauty comes not through its thesis, but in its attunement to the mountain’s own intricate rhythms. (Pacific Film Archive)Read More »
Shinzo Katayama has worked as assistant to Bong Joon-ho (TOKYO, Mother) and Nobuhiro Yamashita (My Back Page, Kueki Ressha) but this is actually his debut in the director’s seat. His effort, of depicting a lowlife man who is trying to take care of his mentally disabled sister was a difficult theme to begin with, but Katayama really took it a step further, in the process creating a movie that hits like a punch with its almost grotesque realism. Let us take things from the beginning, though.Read More »
Stockbroker turned yakuza Shoichi Yoshinari (Hiroyuki Sanada) has been presented with a thankless task. He is to invite an oyabun (don) of a yakuza gang to emcee a succession ceremony — the passing of the baton from the older to the younger generation.Read More »
In the early part of the 13th Century in Japan, warring clans turned the country into a bloody playing field. Ritual execution was the order of the day, and expulsion to the far reaches of the empire–to endure extremes of weather on barely fertile land–was the height of mercy.Read More »
The film was made by the Japanese visual artist Satoshi Uemine, and DVD released in 2005. This silent, personal movie bears and reflects the traces of the re-encounter between the director and his girlfriend, who had been hospitalized because of her deteriorating mental condition. Almost all scenes were shot in Hokkaido, the north island of Japan. Although nothing dramatic happens here, Sizuka no Umi builds a series of beautiful images that are raw, honest, and passionate.Read More »
Quote:
Sayo has just celebrated her sixteenth birthday when she attends a temple festival. On her way back she sees a large cherry tree which is infamous for the legend of dead white horse. When her fiancé returns from war and visits her he comes across a white horse which he takes in.Read More »
From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This is one of the first documentary films about the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It coldly records the lingering effects of the bomb on the victims decades later. In a succession of realistic, shocking sequences, their lives, difficulties, and camaraderie are examined. The very objectivity of incidents, scenes, and faces makes the film the more terrifying.Read More »