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Holy Island

There is a small island where agriculture arrived 1,000 years ago when the inhabitants rescued people from a wrecked ship. The island became prosperous and the culture of the island has been handed down from generation to generation. Iwai Island, Kaminoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The 500 inhabitants of this island in the Seto Inland Sea help each other to survive the harsh natural environment. Water is limited on this rocky island, which often experiences typhoons. The people, however, have flourished by using the sea's resources and cultivating the rocky mountains. You can see clearly in this island that human activities are part of nature’s cycles. In 1982, a nuclear power plant construction project in Tanoura, on the opposite shore about 3.5km from Iwai Island, was proposed. The people here have been opposing to the project.

Holy Island

NR 2010
Record of a Marathon Runner

This was a sponsored documentary film by director Kazuo Kuroki of Japan. This highly artistic film focused entirely on Japanese marathon runner Kenji Kimihara. Kimihara finished eighth in the 1964 Olympic marathon with a time of 2:19:49. He had previously won the Japanese trials in 2:17:11 on April 12th of that year. He competed in a total of three Olympic marathons in all (finishing 2nd in 1968, and 5th in 1972) and he won 9 of 18 marathons prior to the Mexico City Games, including the Boston Marathon in 1966. Kimihara’s personal best was 2:13:25.

Record of a Marathon Runner

10.0 1963
SEAGNAL: The Ocean's Last Call

The ocean is the beginning and end of all life. Yet now, this vast cradle of life is collapsing. SEAGNAL follows the final signals from the ocean, leading us on a journey to confront the truths we’ve long ignored. From marine debris and ghost fishing caused by abandoned fishing gear to overfishing that pushes marine species to the brink of extinction, and coastal villages sinking due to rising sea levels... Our oceans are dying due to humanity’s unchecked greed, ignorance, and indifference. SEAGNAL follows seven individuals who have sensed the ocean’s warning, asking not just to heed the alarm but to reconsider how we coexist with the sea. The ocean’s final signal, SEAGNAL. Are you ready to listen?

SEAGNAL: The Ocean's Last Call

NR 2025
A Visit to Ogawa Productions

A Visit to Ogawa Productions offers a rare insight into the social and cinematic philosophy of one of Japan's best-known documentary film collectives. As the film reveals, Ogawa Productions' in-depth portraits of Japanese society - whether of protest movements or traditional agricultural life - grew out of an unusual commitment to integrate themselves with the communities they filmed, to the extent that their film-making literally became an alternative lifestyle.

A Visit to Ogawa Productions

NR 1981
Paws Land

For many, home is a refuge and a sanctuary; for stray animals, however, a loving home remains a distant dream. From 2019 to 2023, director Au Cheuk-man followed the non-profit organisation Paws Guardian on their harrowing missions to rescue and rehome stray animals – many of whom were abandoned, abused, or tortured. The result is a heartrending collection of stories on survival and resilience, highlighting the brutal realities faced by stray animals: of the 40 stray dogs featured in this documentary, only four ultimately found new homes.

Paws Land

NR 2025
Recipe for C

Recipe for C is a collaborative creation by visual artist Jie-Huai Yang and graphic designer Changwei, inspired by their shared experiences with a mutual ex-boyfriend, C. As a restaurant chef, C centered his life around experimental cooking, with his notes and recipes serving as the foundation for this project. Though a recipe book and a cooking tutorial video, the work transforms intimate emotional memories into a public sensory and visual dialogue. Cooking becomes not only a retrospective of a past relationships and sexual roles. By kneading and blending ingredients, the work reinterprets fragile yet profound memories, showcasing the vulnerability and resilience of emotions. Recipe for C unveils private stories hidden in the shadows, like a dish releasing its lingering aroma, challenging viewers' perceptions of emotions and gender roles.

Recipe for C

NR 2025
Mama Rainbow

For Chinese parents, finding out that their kid is gay usually presents a major tragedy, with the big majority utterly unable to accept the homosexuality of their son or daughter. However, during recent years a fresh rainbow wind has been blowing over the Chinese mainland: a pioneer generation of Chinese parents has been stepping up and speaking out on their love for their gay kids. This documentary features 6 mothers from all over China, who talk openly and freely about their experiences with their homosexual children. With their love, they are giving a whole new definition to Chinese-style family bonds.

Mama Rainbow

6.5 2012
sPACEtIME

Four men travel to a place of their memory. Two of them used to date ten years ago. The story is told through an interviewer and interviewees. Past stories are unearthed and overlap with the present, leading to a new story that seems like something totally different from what it started from. When they start playing Truth or Dare, secrets are revealed, yet it is uncertain whether they are real or merely lies. Their secrets, told amidst an atmosphere filled with destruction, death, and hope, are sarcastic, ridiculous, nonsensical, obsessed, and severely painful.

sPACEtIME

2.0 2015
The Dream of the Red Chamber

This dance film presents Dream of the Red Chamber as reimagined by Lin Hwai-min and performed by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, directed for screen by Chang Chao-Tang. Inspired by the classic Chinese novel, the story centers on the fragile love between Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai, set against the rise and fall of a great aristocratic family. Lin’s choreography frames the tale as a memory: a young man who has left the garden looks back on a vanished world. The Twelve Beauties appear in flowing, embroidered costumes, moving through falling flowers and shifting seasons. Classical imagery merges with contemporary dance, creating a restrained yet lyrical visual language. Premiered in 1983, the work became one of Cloud Gate’s signature productions. In 2005, Lin retired the piece as the company turned toward a more austere, introspective aesthetic. This film preserves a late-stage performance, documenting a key work from Cloud Gate’s early repertoire.

The Dream of the Red Chamber

NR 2005
Li Wen at East Lake

As with everything in life, the same goes for East Lake, a threatened lake near the expanding mega city of Wuhan. You can get worked up about it and get involved - or you can think, it won’t affect me. Fortunately there’s the intriguing new film by Li Luo, which brings to an end these doubts. East Lake (Dong Hu) is a scenic area in the city of Wuhan, threatened by new amusement parks, high-rises and even an airport. ‘East Lake is getting smaller and smaller, but it's bigger and bigger in my memory,’ wrote a friend to the Canada-based Chinese filmmaker Li Luo as a result of the development. In a lucid way, the film investigates how the lake is linked to the people, leading to reflection on identity and survival in today’s China. The form is varied and free. Li uses documentary as well as fictional style elements, and often an ironic mixture of both. © iffr.com

Li Wen at East Lake

6.8 2015
Myselves : The Actress No Makeup Project

The actors start to shoot themselves after they receive the cameras. Kim Kkot-bee goes abroad to shoot her friends from Breathless. She throws parties with her friends there and shoots a film. She also has a good time with her dear sister and brother. When Seo Young-ju finished her busy life with a performance as an actress and an assistant director after shooting a film, Seo leaves on a trip overseas to hibernate. She is thinking what she as an actress should do for the health of the earth. But her loneliness cannot be solved. Yang Eun-yong loves someone, but cannot contact with him. She drinks because of her agony, but cannot resolve her loneliness and thirst easily. However, there is the film in the center of them. Though it is tough, they reveal and discover their new faces through their films, the source of their energy. There is something in the actresses in the shaking cameras; that is what they are looking for.

Myselves : The Actress No Makeup Project

NR 2012
Hut

H is a migrant worker from Indonesia like wandering around and he already ran away for over a year. He built a temporary hut on his ex-employer’s farmland. He took his friend R in the shelter who ran away from metal processing factory and almost got caught when working in a tea plantation. Because of that R rarely steps outside the hut. Tonight, H receives a phone call from his friend T. She said she runs away from fruit processing factory and will come over with her friend B who also ran away from the auto-parts factory. Later the night, run away housekeeper E and D who run away from screw factory appear in the hut. In the same night, the hut of H already becomes well-known.

Hut

NR 2018
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
Taimagura Grandma

They may be elderly, but Masayo and Kumezo Mukaido are still working just as hard as when they were young. Their life is hardly made any easier by the snow that covers their mountain village home of Taimagura, in the north of Japan, for much of the year. But the old woman is good-humored and quick to smile, and the weather conditions are no obstacle at all to their carrying on their work. They mash soybeans with their feet to make miso, chop wood and harvest potatoes. The 16mm footage shows them hard at work on the land, intercut with black-and-white shots of their mountain village, and the elderly couple’s ruminations on life. Then the inevitable happens, and Kumezo dies. Now Masayo is all alone. This loving film documents a modest life packed with all the daily duties that come with working the land. It’s an ode to the unforgiving beauty of nature, an unflagging work ethic and ancient tradition.

Taimagura Grandma

NR 2004
Solo Dancer

Dance educator LIN Ssu-tuan is the first professional nude model in Taiwan in the 1950s and the 1960s, the muse for painters and sculptors in the art world, and the face for photographers’ salons around the world; in the end, she reversed the dynamics of the subject vs. the object and went on to perform her first solo modern dance in 1975, turning herself from the state of passiveness to an active educator of the art of dance. LIN is over 80 years old, but she still fervently pursues her ideals and passions with her body; her path of life is indeed a book of female art history that communicates with the society in Taiwan.

Solo Dancer

NR 2021
Beyond Now, Nyein

Choi Jinbae from Korea and Nyein Thazin from Myanmar are an international couple. They married seven years ago in Mandalay and, after a ceremony in Korea, planned to return. But COVID-19 left them stranded in Seoul. One day, a photo arrives from Myanmar showing a village destroyed by the coup. Urged by fellow Myanmar people to share their country's reality with the world, Choi picks up a camera. An ordinary family's life is suddenly thrust into questions of pain, solidarity, and the ethics of bearing witness.

Beyond Now, Nyein

NR 2025