Eiji Okada

The story of a group of young people who organise their own travelling symphony orchestra to provide music for people living in remote villages shortly after the war.Read More »

Quote:
The Glacier Fox is an exciting documentary filmed in the frozen regions of Northern Japan. Director Korey Kurahara, who apparently was weaned on Disney’s True Life Adventures, strikes just the right balance between reality and artifice. His “cast” consists of a family of wild foxes, each with his or her own distinct personality. The film explores the foxes’ efforts to survive the elements and their ever-threatening environment. The Glacier Fox runs 90 minutes, and “runs” is just the right word to describe the breathless pace of this movie. — Hal EricksonRead More »

Masumura’s 44th film capitalizes on the student unrest of the late sixties as background for a story about a ‘liberated’ woman. Cruelly nymphomaniac, Michi is described as an ‘independent child of the times’, with no family obligations, no taste for housekeeping, and no need of a man to support her. Her sex mania and Nobuyuki’s masochism become less than plausible, and the other characters are all too superficially delineated to be engaging.Read More »

In a sterile building complex, a woman gains a sense of altruism after encountering a street beggar and his blind orphan, much to her husband’s disapproval.Read More »

Quote:
Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan’s national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida’s rarest films. A socially conscious drama with a contemporary backdrop, Dotanba focuses on the attempts to rescue a group of trapped miners. The title is a figure of speech — (essentially “last minute” or “eleventh hour”) — that refers to a situation of peril. The film boasts a script co-written by Uchida and Akira Kurosawa’s frequent screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto, and stars Kurosawa’s frequent star Takashi Shimura.Read More »

Bara no hyôteki (1972)
A gunslinger is hired to kill a news photographer. The young ward of the shot photographer discovers the set-up behind the killing – that a laboratory is being set up by a Nazi organization to capture and train talented youth and that the photographer was about to expose it.Read More »

Synopsis:
Based on a girl’s prize-winning school essay on the subject of “My Mother”. Mizuki Yoko fashioned one of her most moving scripts. Upon the death of her husband the mother (Tanaka Kinuyo) runs the family laundry by herself. She is helped by her first daughter (Kagawa Kyoko) bust must send her second daughter to live with relatives because she cannot afford to keep her. A real shomingeki with lots of heart
— Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film.Read More »

Quote:
Kyoko met Tetsu during her trip to San Francisco. Soon they fell in love but getting married was not in his mind. They were to meet again back in Tokyo but Tetsu didn’t turn up.Read More »

Quote:
One of Hani’s recurring themes was the status of women in modern society. His first attempt at the subject was this Antonioniesque melodrama set in a sterile high rise complex. A woman resident becomes discontent with the empty life she and her husband are leading. They encounter a street beggar who lives in poverty with his dog and a blind orphan. The woman becomes fascinated by the beggar’s world and pursues a friendship which leads to terrible discord and a tragedy.Read More »