Water and lightning. Music and poetry. Life and death. An incantatory and visually sublime river journey that anticipates the cosmic mystery of KAILI BLUES.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 »

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Salome was the daughter of Herod II and Herodias. According to the New Testament, the daughter of Herodias demanded and received the head of John the Baptist. This is a choreographed version of the play by Oscar Wilde.Read More »

Shipbuilder inexplicably shrinks, gets trapped in basement, few inches tall. Must fight for survival in now-hostile ordinary household environment. Sci-fi premise, no explanation given for shrinking phenomenon.Read More »

Anna tries to give her children everything,
although her husband’s lack of employment and their indebtedness are becoming increasingly oppressive.
When it transpires that she is pregnant again, she is faced with a tremendously difficult decision.
On the other hand, Teréz has everything in life except what she most yearns for: a baby.
The wealthy woman offers to resolve all Anna’s financial troubles,
if she will go through with the birth and then hand over the child.
Márta Mészáros’s emotional drama positions the spotlight on surrogacy and the moral dilemmas that surround the subject.Read More »

In a society where kissing is punishable by death, and people pay for things by receiving slaps to the face. Angine, an unhappy woman, shops compulsively in a department store. There, she becomes fascinated by a playful salesgirl. Despite the prohibition of kissing, the two become close, raising the suspicions of a jealous colleague.Read More »

Synopsis:
This is the story of women at three stages of life in Iran. The first part centers on a young girl on her ninth birthday who is told that she can no longer play with the boys she had been playing with only the day before because she is now a “woman”. Told from the perspective of a nine year old “woman” who does not feel like or know what that label refers to, we see how devastatingly this affects both the girl and the boy with whom she had been friends. The second part is about a young woman who decides to enter a bicycle race against her husband’s wishes. As first the husband and then increasing numbers of men from the village ride beside her to convince her to return home, the race begins to symbolize a freedom she desperately wants from the limitations which have been placed on her. Finally, the third part shows us an old woman who has come into some money and is now free to do what she wants. The way she chooses to use this freedom, however, makes one wonder just how free she is.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 »