Kenji Nakagami one of the most notable Japanese writers of the post-war died in 1992. Is work reveals a strong connection to is homeland, Kishu: a mountainous region which connects to the pacific ocean trough a river. “To The Alley” (alternative title) is a documentary about Kenji’s life. Recurring to 16 mm images from the writer’s personal archive and adding new footages the director Aoyama travels trough the paths of the life and art of the Japanese writer.Read More »
During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her. With surprising moments of caricature and slapstick, Obayashi celebrates the anarchic world of adolescence while also satirizing adult hypocrisy and conformism.Read More »
Kenji, abandoned by his mother, scrapes out a meager existence doing odd jobs including driving bar hostesses and their customers home. Besides this he takes care of the sister of an old friend in jail and a young illegal immigrant. But his life reaches a turning point when he happens to meet Chiyoko, his long lost mother. She is now married to Mamiya, the owner of an express package delivery service. They also have a teenage son, Yusuke. Subdued feelings of alarm, discomfort and resentment between Chiyoko, Kenji, and his half brother Yusuke hide underneath and are seemingly caused by the inseparable blood ties that seem to wield control over everyone’s destiny. Is blood that powerful? What exactly defines a mother or a father? While Kenji struggles with these questions and attempts to escape his fate, Chiyoko seems content to let these issues unfold and find a solution. Where will it ultimately lead them?Read More »
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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 »
Story: A music group of girls need to learn to play a song before the school festival.
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What distinguishes Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda from the crowd is a refreshing modesty. Rather than the usual underdog struggle against the odds culminating School of Rock style in the obligatory spectacular stage show and a fat recording contract, Linda Linda Linda’s story revolves around four highschool girls for whom learning how to play a single song in time for the school festival is the ultimate challenge.Read More »
“An art student disappears after murdering his model. Now his friends and family are being haunted by the resurrected woman, Tomie.”Read More »
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It is often said that comedy is the most untranslatable element from culture to culture. This is perhaps even more the case with surreal mixed genre films like this. In Shindo Kaneto’s film (his 101st!) the old sensei has given us a strange meditation on male lusts and women’s struggle for independence. It is like a play in that the action takes place almost exclusively in a small cabin in a deserted region of Western Japan. A mother and daughter are stranded in a ghost town and are starving to death. They hit on a plan to get them out of their plight which involves exploiting the few men who stray into their cabin. They offer sexual services and then bump off the happy customers. All goes well until a local cop shows up and, then, a relation of theirs from way back.Read More »
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During an era of civil wars, in the 7th year of Tenso, Yoshimoto Imagawa was overthrown by Oda Nobunaga with the help of Ieyasu Tokugawa. Ieyasu’s wife, Lady Tsukiyama, was of the ruined Imagawa clan. She was basically abandoned by Ieyasu lest his fealty with Oda Nobunaga be doubted. Ieyasu’s son, half Tokugawa & half Imagawa, was married to Oda’s first daughter Tokumine Gozen, to further assure Oda that there would be no attempt at revenge over the downfall of the Imagawa clan. Read More »
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The fifth directorial effort and the first in around six years from film director and actor Okuda Eiji. This drama, set before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake, offers a delicate depiction of a man and woman forced to leave their hometown in Miyagi Prefecture due to the ‘sins’ they have committed.Read More »