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95mins, 16mm, Sound (no dialogue), Colour
A Burning Star depicts the physicality of destruction and disappearance through images of the Japanese filmmaker’s father who dies and is cremated. Maintaining a solid rhythm and perspective, this film highlights the meaning and importance of “viewing” and “filming” in documentary. (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Asian Currents Programme)Read More »
letterboxd:
STOP SHOOTING VIDEO, HIT THE STREETS.
An attempt to let one’s identity emerge by piercing fragments of 8mm film shot over some 20 years. The filmmaker’s muttering and breathing reverberate over a series of visual images that invoke the primitive pleasure of an image coming into focus. This is a tribute to the culture of 8mm film, which is nearing its end, and a personal film directed with an approach that sets it apart from other films.Read More »
imdb:
After her husband kills himself, future prospects for the demure and beautiful Mitsuko Fuji look incredibly bleak. Fortunately, her dead husband’s largest creditor, Mr. Kito, is there to offer a shoulder to cry on as he offers to settle all her debts. But, sure enough, Kito’s charity comes with certain strings attached; namely that Mitsuko becomes his personal sex slave. Things become even more complicated when Kito’s son Kazuhiko falls for the helpless widow, throwing into jeopardy his own marriage plans.Read More »
Synopsis
Zetcho (1997) is a feature shot on video, including the typical colouring of washed-out white and blue. Again Onishi brings together the couple’s problems, nature and brutalism, set against a colour-changing skyline or in small apartments. The structure of architecture and the one of nature. A cat hiding behind a car. While it all turns out to be a drama of killing and brutalism against women. Travelling or hiding is never easy on that little island.Read More »
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A father decides to put his delinquent daughter into a temple in Kyoto known for its austere novitiate. Initially resistant to all forms of discipline, she ends up falling in love with the nun who is in charge of her.Read More »
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Hiromi Go plays a high school student who needs a role model in his life badly. He’s raised by his older sister played by Keiko Matsuzaka who is a hostess at a night club. She meets a man who becomes her boyfriend. He races in a off-road car rally professionally. The same man becomes Go’s role model and teaches him sophisticated car driving techniques. One of the techniques taught is ‘double clutch’ ( Thus the movie’s title Double Kuracchi ) to make gear transition smoothly between shifts. Due to an unfortunate accident, Matsuzaka’s character dies and Go is left to fend for his life. Hiromi Go was a big pop idol in Japan when this movie was created. Both Go and Matsuzaka still enjoys high celebrity status in Japan.Read More »
Plot : Squareworld has a stark, minimal narrative: a drug-addicted man kidnaps a young woman from the hills and torments her. We learn almost nothing about either the victim or her tormentor, and the film contains no moral judgments.Read More »
Summer gives way to autumn.Read More »
The village, the street, the house you spent your childhood in and where memories always mean flowers, nature and movement in a dark surrounding while the sun is shining outside. You can smell the sea, hear the waves and your shoes will always be dirty from the long way you walked. The father tries to breathe, close to death and pieces of pain are captured in that little camera. But what better can happen to a human being than dying surrounded by your family? The tender hands on your knee and the fresh water. The preparations are taken for the funeral. And outside the light goes on shining, the waves continue their way and it is dark during the night. And the next morning there will be white clouds in the sky again. (desistfilm. com)Read More »