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Extremely Beautiful Landscapes

In the late 1960s, photographer Takuma Nakahira published the legendary photography magazine Provoke with Daido Moriyama. With this edgy writings and photographs, Nakahira rejected preexisting photographic expression. In 1977, an alcohol-induced coma resulted in a permanent partial memory loss. In the following years, with gradual recovery, Nakahira started photographing stray cats, homeless, and thatched roofs in the neighborhood near his home in a monomaniac manner. This is documentary is a portrait of the Nakahira's daily life. Directed by photographer Takashi Homma.

Extremely Beautiful Landscapes

NR 2004
Aether

Kawaguchi's Aether follows on from his earlier film Air (1992), in which he enlarged 8 mm film material, breaking down the image to the level of individual grains and transforming it into a painting. Now he replicates the experiment through a different medium: a digital camera captures a girl walking away in slow motion, and artificial intelligence transforms the enlarged image, finding patterns in the visual noise and thousands of faces in the blurred image. The immortalization of a single happy moment is transformed into a meditation on digital visuality.

Aether

NR 2025
Bessho Tea Factory

A documentary directed by Hori Teiichi who was a production assistant on the 1994 documentary Otentousama ga Hoshii and has worked in a wide variety of genres from pink films to ordinary theatrical releases. The lifestyle and scenery of Osawa, a village situated 740 meters up on the mountainous slopes of Hamamatsu city's northern region in Shizuoka Prefecture, are the focus of this first installment to the "Tenryu-ku" series. It straightforwardly captures the tea harvest in late May and the tea processing conducted in a factory while showcasing mist shrouded tea fields drummed by rain as well as the beauty of the glistening green of the tea leaf shoots.

Bessho Tea Factory

8.5 2014
a BEAUTIFUL REEL. B'z LIVE-GYM 2002 GREEN ~GO★FIGHT★WIN~

a BEAUTIFUL REEL. B'z LIVE-GYM 2002 GREEN ~GO★FIGHT★WIN~ is a home video by B'z, released on November 27, 2002. The release serves as a documentary film covering B'z LIVE-GYM 2002 "GREEN ~GO★FIGHT★WIN~", which toured in support of their twelfth album GREEN. The second disc contains backstage footage of B'z LIVE-GYM 2002 "Rock n' California Roll". With the exception of "Taiyou no Komachi Angel", this release contains the full setlist.

a BEAUTIFUL REEL. B'z LIVE-GYM 2002 GREEN ~GO★FIGHT★WIN~

NR 2002
Jōmon ni hamaru hitobito

Jomon Period. This word that even elementary school students know if they are Japanese. However, the more I know the actual situation, the more mysteries there are ... In fact, most of them are mysteries. Although there are a huge number of strange shaped objects such as clay figurines that seem to support the theory of aliens flying to Earth, what they are, even now in the 21st century. It's still a mystery without anyone reaching the truth. The film approaches the core of its secrets through interviews with archaeologists, cultural figures, artists, and those who are passionate about the Jomon period.

Jōmon ni hamaru hitobito

NR 2018
ガールフレンズ 笠木忍

This 40-minute video was shot and edited in 2000 as a corner of an adult video package called "girlfriends Pure Girl's Document 14". As an adult video, the director personally shoot it for more than half a year, where normal shooting would be completed in 1 to 2 days, and the finished product has only about 2 minutes of erotic scenes in a 40-minute scale. In this work, I left the camera to Shinobu Kasagi and started by keeping a video exchange diary. Other girls wouldn't do that but Ms. Kasagi had the motivation and creativity to "make things", so she took pictures without the need for instructions.

ガールフレンズ 笠木忍

NR 2000
Life on Foreign Land: Burmese in Japan

To escape the oppressive military regime in Burma (Myanmar), Kyaw Kyaw Soe fled to Japan in 1991, leaving his wife behind in his motherland. He spends his days working in a restaurant to make a living and continuing his pro-democracy activities that were banned in Burma. Later, his wife is able to join him in Japan, and the two of them run a Burmese restaurant. Thus begins their new life together in exile. Living in Japan for more than 20 years, Kyaw Kyaw Soe is caught between the wish to be with his family in his own country and the desire to see democracy in his homeland.

Life on Foreign Land: Burmese in Japan

NR 2013
Slum

Originally commissioned to record urban redevelopment in Osaka’s Kamagasaki district, Hideo Arai transcends reportage to capture a haunting portrait of displacement during Japan’s economic miracle. With a dissonant score by experimental composers Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yuji Takahashi, the film juxtaposes the brutal reality of shantytown "barracks" against the state's modernization projects. Slum remains a visceral critique of social erasure and a vital, observational work of Japanese documentary film.

Slum

NR 1961
The Falconer's Legacy

Matsubara Hidetoshi, one of Japan's last traditional falconers, resides in rural Tohoku with only the company of his birds. A high school student requests to become the apprentice of falconer Matsubara, who resolves to pass on his knowledge in recognition of her enthusiasm. Matsubara and his apprentice train on Mt. Gassan, a site of religious pilgrimages that over centuries has been the hunting grounds for many falconers and their birds. The two struggle to control a hawk that never misses them. A sudden request by a young city-dweller may be key to retaining his legacy. It depicts the forgotten lives in modern times that are deeply connected to the nature around us.

The Falconer's Legacy

NR 2023
Dream Cuisine

Japanese filmmaker Li Ying directs the documentary Aji (Dream Cuisine), a portrait of master chef Hatsue Sato. In her late seventies, Hatsue is one of the last chefs who honor the traditional cooking style of China's Shandong province. She and her husband, Koroku, run a restaurant in Tokyo, but she really wants to move back to China where she was born. The filmmakers follow her to Shandong, where she does a television interview and meets culinary college president Liu Gwangwei. When the modern chef can't seem follow her old-fashioned recipes right, she decides to stay in China and cook them herself. However, husband Koroku doesn't want to change his location.

Dream Cuisine

7.0 2003
"O, Kind God!"

"O,Kind God!"is another take on Kazuo Ohno. This moving testimony to the effects his physical evolution has had on his every-day life and dance reveals yet even more strongly that ever-present and life embracing emotions so characteristic of all his previous work. In his appearance in Venice (1999) and a series of performances in his home in Yokohama in 2001, Ohno powerfully demonstrated that his dance embodies life in all its aspects. (Now, though physically immobile), Ohno's very presence continues to exude emotion: it overflows with facial expressions and delicate hand movements; fluid as water and changeable as the sky. This documentary reveals what dance is truly about. Kazuo has given us something very precious.

"O, Kind God!"

NR 2003
The 12th Tokyo May Day

On May 1st, unions all over Japan celebrate May Day, the international day for workers. Workers gather together at parks and hold demonstrations and parades. May Day has its origins in a strike that occurred in the United States on May 1, 1886, a strike that called for an eight-hour workday. Prokino recorded the May Day every year from 1927 to 1932. Among these films, this work is the only one that has survived. However, only its first part has survived. The original film depicts the march to the Ueno Park where the rally was dismissed. Iwasaki Akira coordinated the entire Tokyo Prokino organization as it photographed the 1931 May Day celebrations. They shot in both 16mm and 35mm (other 35mm productions were planned, but this is the only one that achieved completion). A 16mm print was circulated around the countryside by mobile projection units, and a 35mm print was shown at Soviet film nights in Tokyo and Osaka.

The 12th Tokyo May Day

NR 1931
Oasis

Mai, an artist, and Rintaro, a bicycle builder. The two weave through their city on bicycles. A river under an overpass, the ivy in a ditch, the demolition of state housing . . . . The film follows the couple as they move about, taking pictures of whatever catches their eye. Mai believes that even these small stories from everyday encounters constitute the culture of a city and the film documents Mai’s process of incorporating these stories into her work. The film was produced as part of the “Cultural Narrative of a City” project, which strives to present the city Minato in all its delicate yet vibrant cultural diversity.

Oasis

NR 2022