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Qingpu is a famous sacred mountain in Tibet, where countless monks have practiced for thousands of years. In 1989, Wen Pulin and Duan Jinchuan followed several monks up the mountain and took video of them. After three years, they revisited the same people and got a little closer to understanding their lives. As an in-depth dialogue with down-to-earth, rural people in Tibet, the film strives to understand Buddhism both as a philosophy, but also as a personal choice of lifestyle, as a transcendence of the chaos of life.

"The clouds are rushing by, and the architecture of men fit so well in that movement. The bricks. The light is harsh and blue. But in the night it is different, you walk down the street and the sun turns into a light bulb again, the houses are asleep. It feels like thunder and the houses seemed to be dipped into blue and turquoise colours. And then it all turns blue again."

A normal day, a normal family in Hong Kong, a normal school girl and a normal incident at home.

The Father Moon Ik-hwan had been imprisoned for inaugurating the National Security Law after visiting North Korea. However Korean people’s desire for reunification heated up the whole country and Moon Gyu-hyeon and Lim Su-Gyeong visited North Korea. That means Father Moon’s visit to North Korea triggered Korean people’s desire for reunification. This film represents the Father Moon’s point of view on and people’s movement on reunification through influence of his visit in North Korea in 1989.

Animated film by Kouji Nanke.

This animated film is comprised of five themes chosen from Tezuka Osamu's collection of essays "Essay in Idleness of Insects" in which he had compiled studies on insects. Although this collection contains mainly academic studies, it also includes records of insect observation that lead to literary conclusions with mysterious or mythical imagery. The five essays are done in different animation techniques, and each episode is followed by a scene with the boy Tezuka Osamu and a swallow-tailed butterfly called "Oomurasaki." The film depicts the boy Tezuka Osamu desperately chasing Oomurasaki with his butterfly net, together with what he saw in his dreams. This work was screened at the show "Tezuka Osamu: Images of the Past and Future".

Pinku film released in 1996

Unfinished 8mm work by Yukiyasu Shimada.

The legendary yakuza ‘Oni no Tora Seiji’, who sent shockwaves through the underworld nationwide, is said to have a tattoo of a golden Chinese lion and peony on his back. Heitaro Bonno, the boss of the Ordinary Folks Gang, had managed to conceal the fact that he was a yakuza from his daughter, Niko, for 18 years. However, the unsuspecting Niko falls in love with Tsuyoshi, the second-generation head of the Arakai-gumi. Hiranoya panics, desperate to prevent their relationship from blossoming. But just then, the Himuro-gumi of the Kobe Sannō-kai launches an attack on his territory. As the conflict escalates, the Himuro-gumi finally kidnaps Niko! Enraged, Hiranoya’s hidden tattoo emerges on his back…!!

In the mid-1980s, a dozen old people in Old Latse Village in Shigatse, Tibet, voluntarily organized the reconstruction of the Gyang Temple, which was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. With the assistance of villagers, the reconstruction took 10 years. In 1995, they had admitted new members and founded a Mani Association. These old people chant Mani collectively for three days every month. In addition, following the ancient practice in the village, they pray for the safety of the villagers by piously worshiping the gods and making offerings to ghosts. But their ultimate purpose is to support any member to complete their final life journey by organizing a vigil and attending his or her funeral.

The older brother, who has become an unintentionally beggar due to financial real-name, is begging in Apgujeong-dong, and rescues a female college student who is kidnapped by a trafficker, but she sees her brother-in-law and runs away. There is no quiet day for the moaning of the moaning from the bar employee's room, the parents of the official who fights the fictitious day with Mr. Kwon, a construction worker. One day, he meets Yun-ju, who has recovered the bag that was stolen in front of Lee Dae-dae. From then on, Yoon-ju will give you a coin in the can of the old man every day.

Video starring Miho Kiuchi.

Yumi, is a freelance nurse working a temporary contract to help a local doctor. Filled with hope, she visits the doctor, but what she sees there is the gruesome sight of the previous nurse, Kaori, drugged and abused by the doctor every night! "Could it be me next?!" Yumi hides in a hospital room late at night to catch the perpetrators in the act. But the one who appears is Mamoru, the man she abandoned years ago. "You said pretty things about becoming a nurse, but I'll show you just how slutty you are..." As the needle plunges into Yumi's arm as she desperately resists, the angel in white falls to the depths of a lustful beast..

Pink film directed by Shûji Kataoka.

Horror TV-Special broadcast at the 30th April, 1993.

Experimental video by Keiji Aiuchi.

Japanese horror movie from 1997.

Anime adaptation of the same name sports manga by Kurashina Ryou. The small town of Hakodate is suffering from poverty due to the closure of the coal mines. 17-year-old Ken Ryu, a giant man, gambles in boxing fights to feed his mother and sister. Eventually, Ken pursues his unfulfilled dream of becoming a world boxing champion.

Short film by Hiroyuki Oki.

Naomi Kawase observes people in the city of Shibuya with curiosity and openness, drawing parallels between life and filmmaking and discovering her abilities as a filmmaker.

“Sequences of space-time manipulation that raise the problem of continuity in the shot.” - Yo Ota

Shizuko is at a good age when she can forget her lost love with chocolate. Shizuko is always a little in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the day of her graduation ceremony, she finds out that the boy she's been eyeing has a girlfriend, and on top of that, he hears the sound of her stomach growling. She is so shocked that she runs up to the rooftop and meets a girl named Sorae. She says that she hates school and loves to sit on the roof and look at the sky, which makes Shizuko forget her sadness. Sorae also opens her heart to Shizuko, who, like her, is not good at what she does, but somehow likes school. On the day of the graduation ceremony, the two classmates exchange words for the first time and go home together like best friends. The Osaka dialect and the careful, unpretentious imagery subtly create the warm, fluffy quality of the title.

O-Koto, who stole money from the shop where she was working at, became a woman who turned her back on the secular world because of that single moment of weakness. She was caught with the money by the shop owner, who, in exchange for overlooking her crime, took her virginity. Moreover, O-Koto is threatened by a mysterious mendicant monk who somehow knows about her crime, and has no way to resist his orders.

VTR video work. The whole story is a parody of Shuji Terayama and Shuntaro Tanikaws "Video Letter". Self-questioning about "meaning" and "myself" through video. What we end up with is a blue sky.

A group of friends who live in a furnished warehouse faces the forces of evil with their robotic maid/crimefighter.

1990 Japanese film.

In broad daylight, unknown woman called out to me. She began to stalk me obstinately...

This director is the worst and the best. The protagonist, Wakaizumi, makes films with his university friends, but despite being a director, he has no credibility at all due to his selfish and unprincipled nature. He has no finished films. All they have are rumours that he is a strong fighter and that he has eaten cockroaches. Wakaizumi says he wants reality in his films, but he does not know what reality is. Days seem to be unchanging. But as much as something about him hurts people, something about him attracts them, and the filmmaking continues. The well-crafted double structure in terms of composition, direction and camerawork goes beyond the framework of a self-proclaimed 'personal history film' and gives us the best of both worlds: fiction and non-fiction.

All tracks composed and performed by GREATER THAN ONE Original story, visual works, and direction by TAKAYUKI TERAKADO Visual supervised by KUNISAKU MATSUDA Cover designed by HIROMICHI OOHASHI 1. Hair/Spirits 2. Pathway/Entrance 3. Spin/Fall 4. August/Bondage 5. Memories/Scissors

After Luo Dan killed Lao K, the boss of drug organization, 1.5 million dollars from the organization went missing. Lao K's wife hires killers to eliminate Luo Dan, at the same time, other crime organizations start to chase this missing money. Luo Dan have to team up with Kai Bo from international police department to fight their way out.

TV documentary directed by Takahisa Zeze, that follows a woman born on a boat on the Ebitori River, at Haneda.

A boy alienated within his own family, is left with his grandfather who has Alzheimer's disease and who hates him fiercely. He has a very strange night which will make him grow up.

From the moment the man notices it, he begins to listen closely to every sound around him, closes himself off from all interests, and gradually becomes absorbed by the stain.

This shocking film confronts its audience with the weight of love and the consequences of human choices. Throughout the film runs a languid, melancholic atmosphere reminiscent of French cinema, wrapping its difficult subject matter in a delicate veil. Beneath its quiet surface lies a deeply unsettling and emotionally powerful exploration of love, guilt, and forgiveness.

Still, life has meaning. A university student with the unusual name of Takanashi (小鳥遊). He has always been a soft-spoken person, but when he is strongly criticised by others, he has a strange disease that causes him to suddenly fall asleep. Today, he works part-time as a road construction worker, causing trouble, but he falls in love at first sight with a rollerblader who passes by. He is happy to see her again by chance, but in a strange turn of events, he is misunderstood and falls asleep. When he wakes up, he sets off to express his feelings. At the same time, she also starts running to find him... A sensitive and timid young man steps out into the outside world for the first time. Regardless of the outcome, the preciousness of the act itself is lightly conveyed in a spare, lean film.

Niwat is an ordinary person who has to deal with extraordinary events. When someone who looks just like him hurts and tries to kill in order to take his place and take over everything, his friends, family and the person he loves the most is May Sommai, the culprit policeman, so he fights to regain the life he used to be. Along with investigating the secret of the mysterious man b-7 and how did it come about?

Carrying an 8mm camera fitted with a wide-angle lens and an ND filter, I descended the mountain while turning the bulb crank, performing long exposures along the way. With each step, the body swayed. That movement was inscribed onto the film through dappled sunlight filtering through the trees. The blue of the sky, the white of the clouds, and the green of the leaves merged and mixed directly on the film surface. This work marks the beginning of the “light drawing” series using 8mm film. While employing the methodology developed in the previous work Prominence, this piece moves away from its static approach. Instead, it embraces the unavoidable blur inherent in the process and incorporates it more actively, treating motion itself as a dynamic element of the image.

Film by Keiji Aiuchi.

This science film explores the ecology of slime molds, a type of soil microorganism, through three years of observation and filming. This masterpiece was completed at the age of 91 by filmmaker Genichiro Higuchi, who has received international acclaim for his "visual thesis" that explores the mechanism of cell differentiation in cellular slime molds. Since their birth on Earth 1 billion years ago, true slime molds have survived by adapting to a variety of environments. This film uses time-lapse photography under a microscope to capture the rhythms of true slime molds, which cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Video, colour and sound (mono)

Story The human relationship between four men and women that unfolds endlessly in the sweltering sunlight of summer.

Jiang Yue and cinematographer Bi Jianfeng set out to capture a Lama Tibetan Opera group. They did not have much knowledge about filming documentaries at the time. Jiang Yue wanted to artificially construct the scene, but this idea was quickly dispelled by the director of the Tibetan Opera group, Yixi Jiacuo, who insisted that there must be audiences in order for the players to perform on camera. By the end of the show, the audience was touched, as was Jiang, who said that he realized that there was a different energy to his film because of the audience's presence.

Short film that is part of a series of 6 films that Nobuhiro Kawanaka made between 1987 and 1992.

Movements of dressing and undressing.

Experimental work by Isao Yamada (Color, 8mm).

A high school girl is waiting alone for her friend Hanayo in a sparsely populated area. A lecherous salaryman returning from work approaches her, pretending to be kind. This is a shocking erotic-grotesque splatter film reminiscent of 1960s–70s giallo movies. Even though it is clearly fictional, it can be quite disturbing to watch, so it is not recommended for the faint-hearted or for viewing on a full stomach.

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With startling immediacy, this short film captures the shock and horror the Chinese students experienced when government troops opened fire on them in Tiananmen Square. We hear students rallying for democracy just moments before they were to be gunned down. Skillfully compiled from still photographs smuggled out of China, eyewitness accounts, and news sound tracks, it recreates this tragic event in Chinese history. This unforgettable document will remind Americans that the dream of democracy does not come without sacrifice. From high school students studying world events to "Asia watchers" at universities, this film is a must.

Integrating sand animation and traditional cel animation, this short film is a poetic response to the soaring suicide rate in a concrete jungle.

A young man tunes his guitar while holding a telephone, having learned from his teacher that the beep sound of the phone is the same note as the “la” tone of the music scale. Having been discharged from the army following an accident that left him unfit for duty, he now picks up the phone for reasons other than social connection.

Is kindness a cloak of invisibility? A bank employee, Taturu, learns that a tax-saving measure he recommended has backfired and destroyed a client's family. Blaming himself, Ken becomes apathetic and refuses to come to work. His girlfriend, Yuki, watches over him warmly. Determined to make a fresh start for himself and Yuki, he takes a job as a hotel clerk, but on the first night, he is caught up in an unexpected incident. The next morning he goes to a place where he knows he will be blamed for the crime. The next morning he goes to a place where he knows he will be blamed for the crime, knowing that no one will understand his feelings. A young man who loses sight of himself on the borderline between kindness and weakness. The film depicts the wanderings of a lifeless adult in the urban landscape that modern society has created.

After inadvertently rescuing a woman named Utashiki, who had been captured by bounty hunters, Swordsman Jinnai "The Headhunter" soon finds himself confronted by a new threat.

1998 release

An unknown foreigner's vision of the unreal Bangkok. Digital transfer courtesy c/o Thai Film Archive.