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Balinese Requiem

In a Balinese village, families go to great trouble and expense for their extravagant cremation ceremony. They provide special foods to mourners and prepare a bounty of offerings for the deceased, from gifts of money to symbolic baskets. The atmosphere is almost festive as a shadow puppet show is performed for the entertainment of the deceased, inheritances are distributed, and musical processions of mourners walk the streets. Dead family members seem almost present as their bones are uncovered, washed, and arranged for cremation with accompanying prayer rites. During the cremation, the village is filled with smoke from enormous burning pyres shaped like bulls, as the souls of the dead are cleansed of impurity and then sent out to sea so that they may continue their journey to heaven. Shot in 16mm, the film documents and explains the intricacies of these funeral rites and Balinese-Hindu beliefs about death.

Balinese Requiem

NR 1992
Nakagin Capsule Tower: Japanese Metabolist Landmark on the Edge of Destruction

The Nakagin Capsule Tower, designed by Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1972, is an exemplary work of post-war Japanese architectural movement Metabolism. Today, however, this historic building is in danger of demolition. Why do we need to preserve a building? What are the difficulties of preservation? Is demolition a tragedy or a natural phenomenon for modern architecture? Tracing the history of postwar Japanese architecture and reviewing the characteristics of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, this documentary examines the meaning of preservation and demolition from various points of view. The documentary includes interviews with residents of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an architectural historian, a former Kurokawa office architect who was in charge of the Nakagin Capsule Tower project, Kurokawa’s son, and leading architects Arata Isozaki and Toyo Ito.

Nakagin Capsule Tower: Japanese Metabolist Landmark on the Edge of Destruction

NR 2010
In the Rear in Joseon

This is a propaganda film that promotes Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and orders that Koreans to be ready for battle and armed with the Yamato (Japanese) spirit. Women are exhorted to donate a spoonful of rice each time they cook, while men are advised to quit drinking and smoking and donate the money they save to the war effort. The film illustrates how the Japanese colonial rule gave each person a role, however small, so that everyone could serve in the wartime machine. Acquired in 1993.

In the Rear in Joseon

NR 1938
Songs Still Sung: Voices from the Tsunami Shores

In this documentary film, a companion to the book, Arai interviews five women from Ofunato, ages 79 to 100, who have survived as many as three tsunami in the past century! They talk about their childhood memories, their fortitude in the face of war and natural disaster, and the extraordinary depth of spoken Kesengo. Director Suzuki Yoi’s rich poetic sensibility offers a vision of humanity in all its complexity, as the film weaves together their Takuboku translations, poetry by the women themselves, and local songs. Their stories and their language will become a part of everyone who listens to their voices

Songs Still Sung: Voices from the Tsunami Shores

NR 2020
Zeami

This feature-length documentary explores the origins and history of Noh theater in Japan. Noh theater is an ancient Japanese classical art-form: austere and highly mythological. For a very long time, it was only performed before aristocrats and the Imperial court. An evening of Noh drama will invariably include a tale of exile, a tale of tragic love, and a ghost story. Often the plays will contain all three. Like many other classical Japanese art-forms, even the stage scenery in Noh is sharply circumscribed and defined; a bridge, a platform and a pine tree must somewhere be in evidence. While the plays may last as long as in more accessible forms of theater, the dialogue in Noh plays is very slim. The stories move slowly and elegantly to their (usually tragic) conclusions, and are enacted with stunning elegance by actors who often wear masks.

Zeami

9.0 1974
Mothers of Fukushima: Eiko & Yoshiko

Eiko Kanno is a 79 year old grandmother whose life has been completely changed by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Her life should have been with her grandchildren but because of the disaster which caused her entire village of Iitate to be evacuated. She now lives by herself in temporary housing. Yoshiko Kanno and her extended family are very important to her changed life. Yoshiko Kanno lost her parents in the evacuation and she found herself living next door to Eiko Kanno. They entertain themselves by telling jokes to each other like a comedic duo. They now live together.

Mothers of Fukushima: Eiko & Yoshiko

NR 2016
Called to the Mountains

Bluegrass 45, from Kobe, Japan was one of the most prolific bluegrass bands in the 1960s. Fifty years later, they reunite to retrace their 1971 tour deep in the American South. With infectious joy and humor, CALLED TO THE MOUNTAINS explores their unique musical world, as we get to know the individuals who make up the band and their connection to the music and culture that called them, accepted them, and forever changed their identities––from 5,000 miles away.

Called to the Mountains

NR 2024
Bursting Balsam Flower: My Chikuho, My Korea

Having spent her childhood in Dalian and Harbin in the former state of Manchukuo, Taeko Tomiyama carried within her the conviction: “As an Asian, as a woman, I will begin from the margins of beauty.” Noriaki Tsuchimoto, on the other hand, directed numerous films related to Minamata disease. He confronted the suffering of pollution victims head-on, continuing to convey the harshness of life with unflinching clarity. In an interview, Tsuchimoto once remarked: “Within Tomiyama’s narrative world lies something that could be called her eros, her utopia, her aesthetics of liberation. Why does she persist in creating such dark lithographs on the themes of Chikuho and Korea? And how is it that, while doing so, she can also simultaneously depict a world of such beauty?” This film not only reveals the allure of the lithographs themselves, but also centers on the dialogue between Tsuchimoto and Tomiyama. It is a portrait of two comrades, earnestly pursuing the meaning of artistic expression.

Bursting Balsam Flower: My Chikuho, My Korea

NR 1984
Oshokuji no Jikan 2

The virtual dinner series from Japan's K-Network aims to offer lonely guys lessons in dinner date etiquette in the privacy of their homes... or Mom's basement, as the case may be. Features a variety of everyday-type attractive women enjoying a meal and making small talk at the camera, er, at the viewer. The view is face-to-face, as if you were really sharing a tabletop with the sweet young thing. Fortunately you won't have to pick up the check later, but unfortunately she won't be inviting you up for coffee even more later. You win some, you lose some.

Oshokuji no Jikan 2

NR 2008