Japan

  • Satoshi Kon – Sennen joyû AKA Millennium Actress (2001)

    2001-2010AnimationJapanSatoshi Kon

    Quote:
    A TV interviewer and his cameraman meet a former actress and travel through her memories and career.

    Quote:
    Behold Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon’s anime answer to Mulholland Drive. This radical work by the director of Perfect Blue mainlines into a cosmic crawlspace between reality and fantasy from which it never leaves. Kon’s love for his animated diva is supreme and he plays her romantic saga for delirious world-weary sorrow. The genius of Millennium Actress is infinite: the practically monochrome palette that slowly saturates color as the film moves forward in time; the meta-cinematic conceits Kon employs in order to have the film’s male documentary filmmaker penetrate what’s supposedly an older Japanese actress’s recollection of her own past; and the countless rhetorical shifts that evoke the woman’s projection of her romantic melodrama onto her art.Read More »

  • Hiroshi Ando – Blue (2001)

    Drama2001-2010AsianHiroshi AndoJapanQueer Cinema(s)

    Quiet and introspective Kayako routinely has lunch on a rooftop with three of her friends that attend an all girls high school with her in a seaside town. One day she invites Masami Endo to join the group. As her friendship with Masami grows, she loses contact more and more with the others. She is impressed with Endo’s greater knowledge of music and art, and although Endo proclaims that she is insignificant with no aim in life, Kayako says that she wishes that she could be like her new friend. Their feelings deepen beyond friendship and she proclaims her love for Endo on a lonely beach. The two become physically intimate but when summer comes Masami disappears and Kayako learns that she has gone to Tokyo to meet a married man with whom she had an affair the year before. Read More »

  • Koji Wakamatsu – Singapore Sling (1993)

    1991-2000AsianCrimeJapanKoji Wakamatsu

    Wakamatsu’s rare mainstream action film shot in Australia. There’s still plenty of sex and radical politics, along with a lot of explosions.Read More »

  • Kôji Wakamatsu – Ejiki AKA Prey (1979)

    1971-1980DramaJapanKoji Wakamatsu

    Quote:
    Before he reopened his own production company, Wakamatsu directed his first mainstream film for a company called Shishi Productions that had a distribution deal with one of Japan’s major film studios (Toei). The film was called Prey (1979) and starred punk singer-cum-actor Yuya Uchida as a man on a mission to bring reggae music to Japan through his old friends who work in the record industry, but are only interested in promoting the next factory-line ‘idol’ singers and most of whom are involved in drugs and prostitution.Read More »

  • Seijun Suzuki – Ana no kiba AKA The Fang in the Hole (1979)

    1971-1980JapanMysterySeijun SuzukiTV

    A police detective tries to investigate the mystery of a victim who was shot in the head, but no bullet was found. From the Sunday Horror Series.Read More »

  • Buichi Saitô – Ai to shi o mitsumete AKA Gazing at Love and Death (1964)

    Drama1961-1970Buichi SaitôClassicsJapan

    Quote:
    Based on the moving true story of a senior high school student named Michiko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) who contracted a terminal illness and spent the following three years exchanging over 400 letters with her boyfriend Makoto (Mitsuo Hamada).Read More »

  • Isao Yukisada – Parêdo AKA Parade (2009)

    2001-2010DramaIsao YukisadaJapanQueer Cinema(s)

    Quote:
    Four youths share a two bedroom apartment in a corner of Tokyo. A series of assault cases occur in the same district. Eighteen year old Satoru, a male prostitute, joins them as a new house mate. Their daily life slowly starts to change.Read More »

  • Shunji Iwai – Pikunikku AKA Picnic (1996)

    1991-2000DramaFantasyJapanShunji Iwai

    Synopsis:
    The story follows 3 members of a mental asylum, Tsumiji, Coco and Satoru, as they escape from the asylum, and into the real world. On the way, they find a vicar, who changes their out-view on life, by giving them a bible. Tsumiji takes interest and starts believing in god, while Coco believes the world began when she was born. While they look around town, they must walk ontop of the fences and walls to avoid the floor. They read in the bible that the world will end on the 10th July, so they roam around town attempting to find the perfect place for a picnic with the best vantage point to view the final event.Read More »

  • Tetsuya Mariko – Miyamoto kara Kimi e AKA From Miyamoto to You (2019)

    2011-2020AsianJapanRomanceTetsuya Mariko

    SYNOPSIS
    Following the manga series and the subsequent television serial of the same name, and featuring the same cast, a young and relatively inexperienced man comes across a woman during his working day and sparks fly.Read More »

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