Japan

Sadao Nakajima had made his name with Toei’s particular brand of violent action movie, but by the early seventies, the classic yakuza flick was going out of fashion. Datsugoku Hiroshima Satsujinshu (脱獄広島殺人囚, AKA The Rapacious Jailbreaker) follows in the wake of seminal genre buster, Battles Without Honour and Humanity, but also honours the classic Toei ganger movie past in its exploitation leaning, cynically humorous tale of a serial escapee and his ever more convoluted schemes to avoid the bumbling police force’s noose.Read More »

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Based on novel by MATSUMOTO Seicho
The year is 1926. Unhappy with his drunken father and the constant bickering, 15-year-old Takichi runs away from home to Mt. Amagi. During his lonely escapade, he meets interesting characters, including a beautiful prostitute named Hana. They stumble upon a drifter who is later found dead. Hana is implicated in the murder, but she is released for the lack of evidence. Thirty years later, they’ve gone on with their separate lives. Takichi hears of Hana’s whereabouts from a retired police investigator. He embarks on yet another journey to find her…Read More »

After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, convinced by the discourse of an adoption association, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a baby boy. A few years later, their parenthood is shaken by a threatening unknown girl, Hikari, who pretends to be the child’s biological mother. Satoko decides to confront Hikari directly.Read More »

Film 1: Fainda no Onna (Woman in the Viewfinder)
Sakura Mizutani, Kenji Mizuhashi, Yoko Kashiwagura

Photographer Suga (Kenji Mizuhashi) aiming to win the photo contest and Lulu (Sakura Mizutani), a girl who works as a model. Two people who are drawn to each other while maintaining the relationship between the photographer and the model. One day, a mysterious woman, Sayoko (Yoko Kashiwagura), appears in the viewfinder of Suga. Eventually, Suga and Lulu win the long-awaited victory.
[24 minutes 49 seconds]Read More »

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Ten years after World War II, five people set out dig up a stash of morphine buried under a butcher shop in this black comedy by Shohei Imamura.Read More »

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Nagisa Oshima’s first feature film, A STREET OF LOVE AND HOPE paints a biting portrait of poverty and class difference through the life of a young boy who sells pigeons on the street. The radical and unflinching politics that would become Oshima’s hallmark are here on display in his earliest work.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
The title “Twenty-four Eyes” refers to the 12 pairs of eyes belonging to the young students of a small branch school on Shodo Island in the Japanese Inland Sea. The story unfolds in the spring of 1928, when Hisako Oishi (Hideko Takamine) takes over as the new teacher at the local grammar school. At first, the small village does not accept the young schoolteacher who wears Western clothes and rides a bicycle to school. It doesn’t take long, however, before the pupils, their parents, and the entire village fall under the spell of this special teacher. However, trauma does not lie far. The peaceful lives of Shodo Shima contrast the war occurring just over its horizon.Read More »

Mariko Okada (in her film debut) plays a young ballerina prodigy whose parents seem to be trapped in a loveless marriage. The mother has been seeing a family friend for 20 years, but it’s obvious that they feel more than just friendship for each other, causing suspicion and unease with her son. The father throws himself into work, until one day, it all boils over… naruse-style.Read More »

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In their graduation year, the disaffected students turn their concrete box of a school into a backdrop against which to create their own version of society. The newly elected boss Kujo (played with cool panache by rising star Ryuhei Matsuda) disdains all the rules, including those that have led to his election. Into this power vacuum, his scandalized friend and lieutenant Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) enters with vicious intent. As graduation looms, the pupils study violence and death.Read More »