2000s

This film, the first in what has become a semi-autobiographical trilogy for Smihi, follows the everyday experiences of Mohamed-Larbi Salmi against the changing Moroccan society. In 1950s Tangier, Larbi Salmi is a young, timid, pre-teen, boy, trying to make sense of the gentle religious upbringing of his father, the secular education offered him in French school, and his budding desires for the forbidden pleasures of the cinema and the women he meets through it. All the while the film offers a tapestry of fifties Tangier, an international zone marked by the influence of Arab, Berber, European and American histories. ‘This film is dedicated,’ Smihi has stated, ‘to all those in the Arab world who cry out, “long live our freedom, all of our freedoms.”’Read More »

Concentration Face features live performances filmed while on tour in Japan by the band Hella.

Concentration Face (DVD)
“Part I” – 60:26
Tokyo 5/3
Osaka 5/4
Kyoto 5/5
Nagoya 5/6
“Part II” – 60:33
Tokyo 5/7 (Entire Show)Read More »

1580. Ninja Kotaro gets killed by the evil Hattori Hanzo after he discovers that the local shogun and his son aren’t related. It’s up to Kotaro’s nubile and innocent virginal daughter Kaede to exact revenge on Hanzo for bumping off her dad. Kaede learns various lethal sexual martial arts techniques in order to accomplish this particular goal.Read More »

Plot Synopsis
With characteristic invention, Ariane Mnouchkine, one of Europe’s most visionary stage directors, had the actors of Le Théâtre du Soleil improvise refugee stories based on what they’d gathered in a lifetime of newspaper reading before showing them the extraordinary letters on which THE LAST CARAVANSERAIL is based. Selected letters – written by Iranian, and Kurdish refugees held in France, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand – were then organized into an episodic, non-linear, structure that honors and recalls Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, manifold tales of war, no matter its cause, and its consequences. The 6-hour play, presented in two parts, neither points its finger at the West nor portrays the refugees as saintly; what it does is give dimension to withering statistics.Read More »

Violence, illegal pay-offs, drugs, intimidation – all things that you would relate to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, but Gen Takahashi’s epic 3-hour exposé introduces us to the most dangerous gang on the streets – Japanese Law Enforcement. Takeda (Shun Sugata) is an honest police officer, father and husband, but after he’s promoted to detective he quickly becomes embroiled in dirty back room dealings, blackmail, and corruption that goes right to the top of the force. Meanwhile renegade investigator Kusama (Junichi Kawamoto) must decide whether he should shake the foundations of Japanese law enforcement with the information that has come into his possession about the police. What will happen if both these men listen to their consciences?Read More »

Plot:
In the 1990’s Kenjo dies in a terrorist gas attack and his girlfriend, Haruka, is killed while doing her rounds as a prostitute. In 2002, the two of them meet up again…but how can this be possible when they are both dead?Read More »

As powerful and energetic as ever, 78-year old director Seijun Suzuki creates a stunningly lurid, extreme tale of a woman assassin’s (new sensation Makiko Esumi) surreal rise in the criminal underworld. Thirty-three years later, this master of the pulp thriller reworks his own Branded To Kill into a totally new, jaw-dropping experience! The original Branded To Kill (1976, Koroshi No Rakun starring Jo Shishido. Mariko Ogawa, Anne Mari) is the stylish action movie that has been the subject of homage from world-class directors such as John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, and Jim Jarmusch. Its eccentric, eye-popping images and extreme action is fast earning Pistol Opera a worldwide cult following.Read More »

An adultery drama set in a bourgeois family in Bamako, Mali, where tensions are rife within the household: Mimi, bored with the polygamy and routine of marriage, wants to leave Issa. She has a lover, Abba. How will all three cope with this?Read More »

The film tells the story of Aiko, a 35-year-old mute woman who works in a bowling alley, and her brief romance with Yoshioka, a younger man who works as a postal carrier. The two meet when Aiko accidentally knocks Yoshioka off his bicycle, and they have a sexual encounter soon after. Aiko begins preparing lunch boxes and giving them to Yoshioka at his workplace as a way of expressing affection, which she cannot do verbally. However, things take a tragic turn.Read More »