147 Matches Found
In 39 interviews with actors and actresses, writers, producers and staff members, interspersed with film excerpts and stills, Shindō recounts the life and career of his friend and mentor Mizoguchi.
By going to the Philippines, Imamura comes to meet people living in an extreme poverty. He discovers very quickly that some communities are under the control of cruel & armed pirates. Imamura will come to meet those men in order to understand their position.
UFOs and aliens from beyond the stars are common themes in media, entertainment, and other forms of science fiction; however, many individuals have sworn they have seen UFOs and have been abducted in real life! Sit back and watch as the makers of Mazinger take you on a journey through the history of UFO lore. Could it be that UFOs are real and that aliens watch us from afar? In the end, only you can be the judge. This was used for promotion of the then upcoming animated film, "Battlefield of the Space Saucers".
Director Koreyoshi Kurahara chronicles a year in the lives of Flep and Leila, two foxes living in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, where the freezing winters are long and the mild summers short. After Flep defeats another male fox to become Leila's lifelong partner, they mate and raise a litter of five kits. With their family complete, the group must contend with human interference in their habitat, such as chicken farms and snowmobiles, and struggle against the debilitating cold of winter. The animals experience both triumph and tragedy, as the law of this harsh land proves – only the strong survive.
AKA Serial Killer documents the social upheaval and political oppression that roiled Japan in the 1960s, profiling a nineteen-year-old serial killer Norio Nagayama. An indictment of media sensationalism, the film humanizes the young man by situating his crimes in the larger context of his environment.
KINGS OF THE SQUARE RING captures some of the most amazing battles ever seen in the field of mixed martial arts, an extreme sport that combines elements of boxing, wrestling, karate, muay thai, jujitsu, and tae kwon do into a no-holds-barred style of fighting. The collection presents archival footage of fighting greats like Masutatsu Oyama, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, Rikidozan, Antonio Inoki, and Muhammad Ali.
Akira Kurosawa’s only television work—a lyrical documentary that follows a thoroughbred from birth and training to the Japan Derby—framed by a grandfather’s narration to his grandson about the fading bond between people and horses.
1970s Japan saw the rise of biker gangs, known as Bōsōzoku, which drew the interest of the media. God Speed You! Black Emperor follows a member of the bike gang and his interaction with his parents, after he gets in trouble with the police.
When his wife, the outspoken feminist Miyuki Takeda, announced that she was leaving him in order to find herself, Kazuo Hara began this raw, intensely personal documentary as a way to both maintain a connection to the woman he still cared for and to make sense of their complex relationship. Granted at times shockingly intimate access to Miyuki’s personal life, Hara follows her wayward journey toward liberation as she explores her sexuality with both men and women, becomes pregnant and raises a family as a single mother, and grows increasingly disenchanted with the constraints of traditional social structures.
“In Search of Unreturned Soldiers was about former soldiers of the Japanese army who chose not to return to Japan after the war. I found several of them who had remained in Thailand. Two years later, I invited one of them to make his first return visit to Japan and documented it in Outlaw-Matsu Returns Home. During the filming, my subject Fujita asked me to buy him a cleaver so that he could kill his ‘vicious brother.’ I was shocked, and asked him to wait a day so that I could plan how to film the scene. By the next morning, to my relief, Fujita had calmed down and changed his mind about killing his brother. But I couldn’t have had a sharper insight into the ethical questions provoked by this kind of documentary filmmaking.” —Shôhei Imamura
Fight! Our Heroes Gather was a televised celebration of tokusatsu heroes in 1975.
Famed filmmaker tracks down former Japanese soldiers in Malaysia.
Documentary on the expansion of Kyokushin Karate following the first world championship.
Postwar Japan as it is described by Etsuko, the manager of a bar catering to foreigners in Yokosuka. The way of life of a woman brimming with vitality, who skipped the countryside right after the war and, with her womanhood as a weapon, lived through atomic bombings, black markets, prostitution aimed at American soldiers and the Korean War. Inserting newsreels, Shohei Imamura depicts the history of twenty-five years in the Japanese postwar by way of the female body. (doclisboa)
A documentary about the 1972 Winter Olympic Games in Sapporo, Japan.
After the waning of the protests in Sanrizuka, Ogawa Pro started questioning the future of the collective and looking for other subjects to film. Following the method developed in the previous films, the filmmakers moved to the slum of Kotobuchi in the port city of Yokohama, where more than 6000 people were struggling to get by without any means of survival, exposed to industrial accidents and diseases. The result is one of the most moving films produced by the collective, a series of beautifully filmed portraits, voicing the silenced stories and songs of a group of people living in this community. Credit: ICA London
A plan of a house that is reminiscent of a miniature garden used as a psychological treatment to assist in self-confirmation at a middle-class housewive’s tea party.
A Documentary on the Japanese baseball player Sadaharu Oh
A documentary about the other side of yakuza society from Noboru Ando, the former leader of the group. Directed by Noboru Ando and Akira Shiizuka.
A look at sex in Japan, that covers underground gay life, transvestites, sex change operations, tattoos, and S&M. What does it mean to live an individualistic life in the modern age? By capturing the seemingly bizarre customs of men in drag and women in men's clothing seen on the streets, and examining the world of sexual perversion in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of our homogenized modern society, we explore whether it represents the pinnacle of pleasure, or a world of endless hell.
On their way back from the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, filmmakers Wakamatsu Koji and Adachi Masao visited Lebanon to meet Japan's Red Army faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to shoot a newsreel film promoting the Palestinian resistance. Conceived as a ‘declaration of world war’ that implicates us all, the directors capture the everyday banality of military training and preparation exercises for imminent battle.
In Thailand, three Japanese soldiers, left in the jungle more than a quarter of a century after their country's defeat, come together to discuss what their life was like during and after the war. Part two of Imamura's quest for Japanese soldiers who stayed behind after the war.
Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute is a 1975 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura. It is a documentary on one of the Japanese "karayuki-san," who were women that were taken from their homes in Japan and used as prostitutes in the post-war period. Many of these women were told that they were doing this to support their families because of the extreme poverty that the war left much of Japan to live in. Imamura focuses on a particular such woman who was sent to Malaysia and never returned to Japan. Joan Mellen, in The Waves at Genji's Door, called this film, "Perhaps the most brilliant and feeling of Imamura's fine documentaries."
Mariko Miyagi's documentary about everyday life at the school she founded, Silktree (Nemunoki).
Kazuo Hara follows the lives and activities of Yokota Hiroshi and Yokozuka Koichi, members of an activist group made up of people with cerebral palsy.
The documentary covers notable Japanese martial arts from Okinawa Karate to Ninjutsu, Kendo, Shorinji Kenpo, sword fighting techniques, and even firearms. Various martial arts masters, from Shorinji Kenpo founder Doshin So to Japan Karate Association’s Masafumi Suzuki (who also frequently appeared in Toei’s karate films) and a supposedly 102 year old Okinawa Karate practitioner are brought in front of camera for interviews and martial arts demonstrations.
Fluxus artist and composer Takehisa Kosugi assembled a crew of young musicians and hit the road in a VW bus from Rotterdam to the Taj Mahal, playing a series of shows along the way in which the band used traditional instruments run through a series of electronic effects to create long sheets of drone both pulsing and timeless. Filmed by Takehisa Kosugi's mentor Matsu Ohno (perhaps best known in the States for his sound effects/score work on the television series Astro-Boy), the film moves at the same pace as the music itself, a pastoral road movie following a band far more likely to play temples than clubs.
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.
Documentary about the politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
1974 documentary about Ali.
A little Japanese girl of six is transferred to a school in Sardinia where she slowly finds friends and a place before going off again.
"Sanrizuka: The Three-Day War" is a documentary by Shinsuke Ogawa chronicling the escalation of conflict surrounding the Japanese government’s plan to build a new international airport on farmland in Sanrizuka near Tokyo. As farmers resisted eviction and activists from across the country joined the struggle, clashes with police intensified, resulting in large-scale confrontations that marked a critical phase of the Sanrizuka movement.
A history of the Pacific War comprising of American combat footage with Japanese wartime newsreels
Portrait of Japanese youth. Produced for the Japan Foundation.
Shinsuke Ogawa documentary about the life of the farmers in Heta Village opposing their resettlement due to the construction of Narita Airport.
The poignant focal point for this film is a cherry tree that is over 1400 years old. Beginning with the tree, the director then explores the families and environment around the tree. The editing and music contribute to the sense of a haunting past contained within the solid structure of an ancient natural wonder.
A record of the skills of six artisans and craftsmen honored with the title 'Living National Treasure'
Following cine-tracts Hangun No. 1 to 3 about the course of the trial of Konishi Makoto, an anti-war SDF official accused of mutiny
The sea around Minamata was heavily polluted with mercury during the 1950s and 1960s from the Chisso Corporation's chemical factory. This highly toxic chemical bioaccumulated in shellfish and fish in the Yatsushiro Sea which, when eaten by the local populace, gave rise to Minamata disease. The disease was responsible for the deaths and disabling of thousands of residents, all around the Yatsushiro Sea. The marine ecosystem was also extensively damaged.
An examination of the art of pottery through the works of two world renowned potters –Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. The film traces the entire process of pottery making, beginning with the digging of clay and its preparation, and on through the long sequences of pods being thrown on the wheel.
Pinku from 1971
Cruel Famine Continent documents the Great Sahelian drought in West Africa and its effect on the people. The production was an attempt to pivot Toei's output from yakuza films and Toei Porn towards "global issues" and "whatever makes money", as stated by then-Toei president Shigeru Okada. Theatrical proceeds were to be shared as relief funds through the Japanese Red Cross, though the box office returns are unknown. Footage shot for the documentary by Yoshimitsu Banno would later be reused in the 1974 Toho production Prophecies of Nostradamus.
This rural documentary features poet Jin Makabe. Thoughts about agriculture, memories, landscapes.
Do humans have the right to judge and kill other humans? This program includes a history of capital punishment around the world through documentary footage and commentary. The electric chair, firing squad, hanging, poison gas, beating to death, slow execution, crotch-splitting, iron maiden, guillotine, execution by running, and beheading... It features a military execution in a South American country, obtained from a former prison officer. It also includes footage of the reality of life in Japanese prisons, death row inmates facing death, the parents of death row inmates, the families of their victims, and the gallows.
Documentary on baseball player Shigeo Nagashima
A documentary about the 1974 film Prophecies of Nostradamus, released to coincide with the latter's release. It featured several prophets and experts on meteorology and food ecology giving their respective takes on the 1999 apocalypse which Nostradamus predicted. Performers Hiroshi Itsuki, Shizue Abe and Linda Yamamoto appeared as well as the film's stars, Tetsuro Tanba, Yoko Tsukasa, Toshio Kurosawa and Yumi Kaoru.
A work of Video Earth Tokyo. Carrying in the rice cooker to the Shinkansen (express train), the group cooked rice between Tokyo and Nagoya. As the train arrives, they started to have a dinner party on the platform.
Six months after the liberation of Vietnam, a ship called the Thong Nhat (Unification) arrives at Saigon Port. People return to their hometowns from North Vietnam for the first time in 20 years.
The United States celebrates its bicentennial. The film depicts the history of a rebellious nation that has been overshadowed by the authentic history of the U.S., including slums, Vietnam veterans, incarcerated Nikkei, and indigenous peoples.
At Nemunoki, children and young adults with physical, intellectual or familial difficulties are gently encouraged to discover and develop their talents through such activities as painting, music, tea ceremony and dancing.
Budo: The Art of Killing is an award winning 1978 Japanese martial arts documentary created and produced by Hisao Masuda and financed by The Arthur Davis Company. Considered a cult classic, the film is a compilation of various Japanese martial art demonstrations by several famous Japanese instructors such as Gozo Shioda, Taizaburo Nakamura and Teruo Hayashi. Martial arts featured in the film include: Karate, Aikido, Kendo, Sumo, and Judo among others.
In this program based on the book of the same name by Ishimure Michiko, Kitabayashi Tanie plays “Goze,” a blind wandering performer who drifts around the stricken region of Minamata in the wake of methylmercury contamination.