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The Story of a Butcher Shop

The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over from the caste system abolished in the 19th century that is still subject to discrimination. As the Kitades are forced to make the difficult decision to shut down their slaughterhouse, the question posed by the film is whether doing this will also result in the deconstruction of the prejudices imposed on them. Though primarily documenting the process of their work with meticulous detail, Aya Hanabusa also touches on the Kitades' participation in the buraku liberation movement. Hanabusa's heartfelt portrait expands from the story of an old-fashioned family business competing with corporate supermarkets, toward a subtle and sophisticated critique of social exclusion and the persistence of ancient prejudices.

The Story of a Butcher Shop

5.2 2013
Pilgrimage to Japanese Baths

Ippei was born at the cost of his mother's life. This fact haunts him, he felt a longing for Japan's ancient hot springs and embarked on a journey to find his ideal bath. The pinnacle of baths was the bathhouses with female bathers during the Keicho and Kan'ei eras. Men would drink sake with female bathers, push them down, and moan as they did so. Bathing also had an aspect of women's pursuit of beauty. Beautiful women try out various forms of bathing. Ippei's pilgrimage introduces various hot springs and engaging in sexual acts with the hot women he encounters. He experiences various bathing scenes, including Turkish baths and secretly filmed geishas bathing.

Pilgrimage to Japanese Baths

6.2 1971
Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams

Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in Koshien, Japan’s national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include US baseball stars Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. As popular as America’s World Series, the stakes are beyond high in this single-elimination tournament. For Coach Mizutani, cleaning the grounds and greeting guests are equally important as honing baseball skills, however, demonstrating discipline, sacrifice and unwavering dedication. Director Ema Ryan Yamazaki follows Mizutani and his team on their quest to win the 100th annual Koshien, and, in the process, goes beyond baseball to reveal the heart of the Japanese national character.

Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams

6.0 2019
Words Fly Back to the Black Earth

A calling inhabits the blank pages, unfolding a secret writing of hers. The unseen written traces seep from the murmuring land, pushing through fragmented voices to become new forms, beings made material. Framed as a dialogue with my grandmother, this film explores an alternative form of personal writing by Chinese women in political shifts, absent and abundant. The 'blank' becomes an image, carrying a search for agency; of land transformed and of women unheard. By breaking down linguistic structures, the film opens a space for imagining, reading, and performing, allowing for emergence.

Words Fly Back to the Black Earth

NR 2025
The Inspired Island: Unfulfilled Dreams

Chu Tien-Wen, frequent screenwriter for Hou Hsiao-Hsien, makes her directorial debut with this entry in The Inspired Island documentary series. With Hou as producer, cinematographer Yao Hung-I and editor Liao ChingSung, Chu takes a deep dive into the story of her parents, famed authors Chu Hsi-Ning and Liu Mu-Sha. Through family albums, old letters and interviews with fellow writers, Chu crafts a deeply personal portrait of her parents’ romance, literary careers, family roots and the unfinished opus her father left behind.

The Inspired Island: Unfulfilled Dreams

8.0 2020
YOASOBI 5th ANNIVERSARY DOME LIVE 2024 "SURREALISM"

YOASOBI is a "unit that turns novels into music." Their debut song "Racing into the Night," released in November 2019, quickly attracted attention immediately after its release, dominating various domestic distribution charts, and currently has a cumulative total of over 11 billion streams, the first time in history. The legendary Japanese music group's live performance is now turned into a theatrical version which features footages of all the songs performed at the Tokyo Dome finale with exclusive behind the scenes documentary footage .

YOASOBI 5th ANNIVERSARY DOME LIVE 2024 "SURREALISM"

10.0 2025
The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela

Raquela is a transsexual, or lady boy, from the Philippines, who dreams of escaping the streets of Cebu City for a fairy tale life in Paris. In order to make her dreams come true, she turns from prostitution toward the more lucrative business of Internet porn. Her success as a porn star brings new friends, including Valerie, a lady boy in Iceland, and Michael, the owner of the website Raquela works for. Valerie helps Raquela get as far as Iceland. From there, Michael offers her a rendezvous in Paris. Will Paris be everything she dreamed of? And will Michael turn out to be her Prince Charming?

The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela

4.0 2008
Inside Zokki

"ZOKKI" is a unique film directed by Naoto Takenaka, Takayuki Yamada, and Takumi Saitoh. It is a live-action adaptation of a short story collection by manga artist, Hiroyuki Ohashi. The people of Gamagori City, Aichi, where the film will be shot, were particularly happy in 2020 when the production started. For the past eight years, volunteers from Gamagori, including printers, bakers, and pubs, have been working to bring the film to the city, and now the city of Gamagori has decided to get involved and fully support the film "ZOKKI"! A number of happenings occur in the once peaceful place of Gamagori. The film was shot by a gorgeous cast and staff. And a group of amateurs struggle to somehow make the film more exciting. "URAZOKKI" is a story about the "behind-the-scene" of a group of people who come together to make a film. That's what the film was supposed to be like....

Inside Zokki

NR 2021
The Songs of Studio Ghibli

This program will give you an up-close look at some of the studio’s most famous films along with the music of STUDIO GHIBLI that continues to have multi-generational appeal. Songs are performed by popular J-pop stars and artists who have worked with STUDIO GHIBLI over the years. Treat yourself to fun and moving performances that pay homage to your favorite STUDIO GHIBLI films, hear rare stories about Hayao Miyazaki, and learn about the history of Isao Takahata and how he became one of Japan’s greatest treasures. Filmed at Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum’s Ghibli Expo -From Nausicaä to Marnie- exhibition, this 45-minute program is jam-packed with the magic of STUDIO GHIBLI, including famous scenes from your favorite STUDIO GHIBLI works.

The Songs of Studio Ghibli

NR 2019
The Long Hole

A detective is led by an accidental postcard to investigate an incident at USFK base Camp Long. Camp Long is in ruins with no one coming for twenty years. In the process of gathering, defragmenting, and arranging neglected information, the detective discovers that a strange geographic data value called Camp Long ATM occupies all space and time. However, there are no traces of any ATMs or banks at the scene, and only bright red bloodstains are disguised as evidence. The film is a mystery report of a detective trying to understand the legacy of time.

The Long Hole

NR 2021
We Have Boots

The Umbrella Movement of 2014, also known as the Occupy Movement, paved the way for Hong Kong’s current upheavals, but unfolded in significantly different ways. This creative documentary focuses on the intellectual, political, and discursive underpinnings of the social and political actions of 2014, before fast-forwarding to 2019. A range of thoughtful and engaged intellectuals, students, scholars, activists, and artists including Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man, Ray Wong, and Agnes Chow (many of whom are facing imprisonment for their democratic activism) articulate a range of philosophies, viewpoints and emotions, set against Hong Kong’s spectacular urban background of skyscrapers, night lights, and street-occupying mass movements.

We Have Boots

7.0 2020
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko & Ichiro Itano: Collection of KeyAnimation Films

“Mobile Suit Gundam” series are still favored by various generations, passed its 35th anniversary. The animators who played the core roles in the memorable first series “Mobile Suit Gundam” are Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Ichiro Itano: “We would like to leave the key animations as the film production to posterity to praise their achievements, which influenced not only on the audience but also on the current anime industry.”

Yoshikazu Yasuhiko & Ichiro Itano: Collection of KeyAnimation Films

5.0 2014
Hajimemashite Nakamori Akina

Akina Nakamori's second video work "Hajimemashite" consists of 12 songs (including three singles "Slow Motion," "Girl A," and "Second Love") from her debut year (1982), filmed at Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles and other locations where Akina Nakamori visited to record and interview for "Slow Motion" from March 11 to 17, 1982, just before her debut. It also includes the recording of her debut song "Slow Motion," and is full of valuable memorial footage from before her debut!

Hajimemashite Nakamori Akina

10.0 1985
Ai Weiwei's Appeal ¥15,220,910.50

Ai Weiwei’s Appeal ¥15,220,910.50 opens with Ai Weiwei’s mother at the Venice Biennial in the summer of 2013 examining Ai’s large S.A.C.R.E.D. installation portraying his 81 day imprisonment. The documentary goes onto chronologically reconstruct the events that occurred from the time he was arrested at the Beijing airport in April 2011 to his final court appeal in September 2012. The film portrays the day-to-day activity surrounding Ai Weiwei, his family and his associates ranging from consistent visits by the authorities, interviews with reporters, support and donations from fans, and court dates. The Film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam on January 23, 2014.

Ai Weiwei's Appeal ¥15,220,910.50

NR 2014
BUCK-TICK Climax Together on Screen 1992-2016

BUCK-TICK's "CLIMAX TOGETHER" which was done on the same date, the same place in 1992, 2004, 2016 and 12 years cycle. It is a track of "BUCK - TICK" evolution that will continue to operate in major scenes from the dawn of Japanese rock industry. Death of familiar people, global terrorism, threat of nature. A deep bond and affection with fans who keep closing together no matter how many years passed. By sharing sorrows that never can resist and the joy that anyone can not take, a message was born and a song was born. The work now approaches the core of "CLIMAX TOGETHER" and "BUCK - TICK", by interviewing the members, and re - editing the images released as works until now as unpublished scenes, for 32 years since the formation It became a work that can recognize the growth and ties of the members who have been walking.

BUCK-TICK Climax Together on Screen 1992-2016

6.0 2017
Taming the Horse

Tao and Dong promised each other they’d return to the village where the latter grew up, in Inner Mongolia, before following his family, who left to find better fortune in a large city in Southern China. This voyage is a mere pretext meant to reconnect the two childhood friends, who were separated for ten years. With a rare sensitivity, Tao Gu films this companion, who was lost not only “from view”, approaching him stealthily to capture all of his tragic intensity, his disillusioned generosity. Dong has remained a dreamer besotted with rock, an incensed body struggling to find money (he comes up with a jade business which does not work out), love, sex and, above all, to live following his own conceptions of liberty, under the ambiguous gaze of his parents and his “successful” brother.

Taming the Horse

6.0 2017
Try to Remember

Lee Nan-young, who is famous for ‘Tears in Mokpo,’ made her debut at OK Records in the 1930s, and married Kim Hae-song, an acclaimed, genius composer at that time. In the year of liberation in 1945, 'KPK Musical Troupe' won popularity with the duo of Lee Nan-young and Kim Hae-song, but Kim got kidnapped by North Korea. During the Korean War, Lee made Korea’s first girl vocal group ‘Kim Sisters’ with her daughters Suk-ja, Ae-ja and her niece Min-ja who inherited their parents’ musical talent. Thanks to Lee’s desperate effort and intense training, ‘Kim Sisters’ gained popularity at the American 8th Army base. They got all the way to Las Vegas, USA for the first time as Asians, showing strong appeal to American public. Min-ja of ‘Kim Sisters’ is still working as a singer in Budapest, Hungary. The audience can meet the three shy girls who fluently sang songs in English without even knowing the language, through the memories of Min-ja in the film.

Try to Remember

NR 2017
Yoyogi

A witty and sensitive observation of people visiting Central Park of Tokyo – YoyoGi. We all live in a world of online communication and rush, but there are places where one can still come to him/herself in offline. Following Japanese tradition of contemplation and harmony, an Estonian director explores Eastern way of finding the balance through nature and solitude. Hauki poetry, written especially by a well-known Japan-researcher from Tallinn Rein Raud add a new angle to the whole picture, turning the film into an endless meditation flow.

Yoyogi

5.0 2022
Tsunma, Tsunma: My Summer with the Female Monastics of the Himalaya

Tsunma, an honorific term connoting “noble, delicate, and pure”, refers to the Tibetan Buddhist Nuns of the Himalayan Region who have been largely dismissed or forgotten by the traditions they follow and the societies they’ve served. Taiwanese photographer Lin Li-Fang undertook a solo journey up 4,270 meters into the Himalayan Plateau and lived for an entire summer with some of these nuns and recorded life in the unforgiving environment dubbed “The Roof of the World”. There, Li-fang captured a life devoted to hope and faith and a people possessing a unique kind of tolerance, humility, and perseverance. This is a story of the Nuns of the Himalayas, of seeing one’s life through theirs, that is, a life lived in faith and with the spark of a summer eternal.

Tsunma, Tsunma: My Summer with the Female Monastics of the Himalaya

NR 2017