Japan

The relationships between the hostesses and the customers who visit a typical city bar.Read More »

Machiko (Chieko Baisho) lives comfortably with her father, grandmother and two younger brothers while working at a cosmetics factory in Shitamachi. Her boyfriend Michio (Tamotsu Hayakawa) has dreams of landing a salaried position and settling down in the suburbs, but Machiko begins to question whether middle class life will really bring her happiness.Read More »

A requiem for Nikkatsu itself. In 1988, the powerful studio – realizing that it could no longer compete with the onslaught of AVs { Adult Videos} – decided to halt pink production. Th e Last Cabaret was written and produced as a metaphorical self-portrait, as at least one critic put it: “an homage to their own relevance.” Due to the voracious appetite of a land developer, a popular cabaret {think Nikkatsu here} is forced to close its doors . The owner’s daughter, melancholy over the foreclosure, goes looking for her father’s legendary girlfriends { think Nikkatsu starlets } to reminisce over the good ole days. Nikkatsu would produce only one more pink film, Bed Partner.
Japanese Cinema EncyclopediaRead More »

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Makino records the life around him on film, which he then digitizes, color correct, and layers, adding electronic noise, to create intense visceral experiences out of his daily experience. Freed of its referential moorings, the subject matter becomes atomized, reduced to a proto-image particulate.Read More »

With a screenplay by Aki Kajiwara and direction by Bunaki Takahashi, this is a story of “social isolation”. Itatani plays the main character, Kitabayashi Sanchiko, who sells jewelry she makes at her studio during the day and works part-time as a lodger at a yakitori restaurant at night, but loses her job and home due to the epidemic. There are no new jobs and the family restaurant and manga cafe are closed. Standing in front of the desperate Mitsuko is a bus stop illuminated by streetlights. No one can see the weakness and she becomes a homeless person who spends the night at the bus stop.Read More »

Original title: レイブンズ
The obsessive love and many deaths of Masahisa Fukase.
Enigmatic, rejected, heartbroken. Masahisa Fukase must rebuild his life, overcome tradition, his inner demons and the pain of a broken marriage. The fascinating love story of the iconic Japanese photographer, his wife, his art and his family told for the very first time. A love consumed and destroyed by a life of photography.Read More »

One morning Jun (Mizutani Yutaka) gets into an angry argument with his father (Uchida Ryohei) over his girlfriend (Harada Mieko) whom his father disapproves of. In a fit of bloody rage, Jun kills his father. He decides to turn himself into the police, but his mother (Ichihara Etsuko) stops him. Eerily calm after the shock, she suggests that they dispose of the body, and then move to another place where no one will know them. When Jun moves the body out of the house, his mother suddenly changes moods again and points a knife at him.Read More »

After moving in to their dream home, newlyweds decide to rent out their second floor to save money. They soon discover the woe of being landlords in director Yamada Yoji’s memorable debut film.Read More »

The story of Thirteen Assassins begins with a vassal of the Akashi clan committing seppuku in front of a daimyo’s house. As it turns out, it’s in protest to his lord raping and killing a girl and her samurai husband. This scandal is quickly covered up as the Akashi lord happens to be the Shogun’s younger brother. What makes matters worse is that this reckless scoundrel will be soon appointed to a higher political position which could prove to be detrimental for the entire Shogunate. In response to that, a plot is hatched: 13 assassins will undertake the suicide mission to murder him on his way back from Edo.Read More »