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Betrayed by the legendary horse racing tipster Date, Keisuke has now joined forces with Tokai and Ochiai. Using thermal imaging cameras to assess the horses’ physical condition and predict the winning horse with a high degree of accuracy, the trio’s profits have reached 30 million yen. However, Date, having caught wind of this, steals both their earnings and their partners. Keisuke vows revenge…

This is director Kazuyuki Handa’s debut film. Driven by an intense drum beat, the match unfolds at breakneck speed and is over almost before it begins. The clue lies in the title!

A rejected man screams toward the sea. Then he runs. He collides with a woman walking along the beach and immediately tries to pick her up. Things seem to go well, but he is dumped again at the last moment. So he runs once more.

As winter draws near, a 30 million yen bank robbery takes place. The following day, Chiaki, a devoted younger sister, visits her older brother Hiroki as she always does. Having lost their parents, the two live alone as siblings, but the impoverished Hiroki has nothing he can give his sister.

An experimental work in which pictures for the artist’s solo exhibition are animated with the minimum number of frames to create a sense of movement.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Experimental film by Yosuke Okawado.

Visual Queen of the Year '93 video, starring Misako Endo.

A work that approaches the limits of time compression. Raw looped film. Super multiple exposure photography. People flow and the light flickers. Real-time accumulated footage. It starts moving smoothly. This work also following "Touch of Inga", other than the production of raw film, from developing to producing screening prints. All processed in-house.

The film runs like the scenery seen from the train. The images flow, then stop, it starts moving again. A man and a woman meet. Colorful carp swimming gracefully. A view of castle walls with perforations. A miscellaneous and elusive image thread the screen. The image gave up movement and eventually began to dissolve... A work that I rediscovered projecting film.

LaserDisc video showing a playthrough of Namco's arcade game Solvalou

Experimental film by Hiroyuki Sekine.

Experimental short by Harumi Fujii.

Experimental short by Harumi Fujii.

A series of stylish images of the sea, jellyfish, and women that unfold like nests.

Short film by Fumie Kamioka

A detailed introduction to curse rituals and secret techniques supervised by Toshiya Nakahara.

Short Two-story horror omnibus “Cherry Tree in the Schoolyard” and “Face in the Book!”.

Short Two-story horror omnibus “The Dead Spirits sing!” and “The Toilet invites you to another Dimension”.

Japanese horror movie from 1992.

Nanako Kurihara came to the U.S. to escape being trapped as a woman in a repressive Japanese society. In New York she met a woman named Fumiko who had been active in the women's liberation movement in Japan. After the death of Fumiko, Nanako returned to Japan to find out became of the women's movement there

Matsuda is a young theater student who pretends to be blind and practices acting. In the midst of his practice, he witnesses a murder scene.

Animated short film

Created a new mythology for cold lands. Imaginary animals were rendered by the fur-renderer which was developed by Debuchi.

16mm short by Masaru Noto.

16mm short by Masaru Noto.

16mm short by Masaru Noto.

Ms. Taki Kudo says she has been able to connect with deities since she was six or seven years old. Even in modern Japan, mediums like Ms. Kudo are in demand, providing such traditional services as expelling a curse and invoking spirits for health and long life. At twice-annual rituals at Mt. Osore-Zan, she and other female spirit mediums allow the dead to speak through them, relaying insight, comfort and warnings from the deceased to their loved ones. Another important duty is caring for the mulberry-wood Oshirasama puppets representing individual souls. Ms. Kudo dresses and stores the puppets and performs the lively rites in which spirits come down from the mountain in order to protect and purify the people of her village - the deities are cajoled by offerings of food, lights, money and candy.

An 8mm film study framing a woman and the different images of her own self being overlapped.

A conversation between the filmmaker and his mother in the purest form; cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, about the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis in Peru. Calling for a delivery of noodles for lunch, but the delivery service is closed. Starting to cook udon noodles. A telephone dialling, a car ride. The noodles are cooked and people talk about Germany. The sound of the cooking appliances: rattling and sizzling. A pure focus on the conversations.

The family fortune left to his father by his grandfather. The location of the bloodline he will inherit. The story is set in the middle of the Tekkou region, in the heart of a small town in the middle of nowhere.

L'Arc~en~Ciel live at Tokyo Bay.

SHUICHI INOHANA FILM WORK １９９０

While studying in Beijing, China, Yoh leaves her wallet in a taxi. He is depressed that he will not get it back, but the next thing he knows, a Japanese man in the taxi has delivered it to him. A delighted Yoh goes out to meet the person to thank him. The person was a woman called Tomomi, also a student studying abroad. Despite meeting each other for the first time, their conversation is lively and Yoh immediately falls in love with her. When Tomomi told him she wanted to see him again, he gave her his pager number. The next day, Yoh sends a message to her pager.

Your own flag, fly it! A boy who feels uncomfortable in his surroundings because of his 1/4 black blood and cannot help thinking about his identity. A girl who has not yet had her first menstruation at the age of 20 and is frustrated by the insensitivity of the world. The boy turns the camera on the young man to find out 'what it means to be Japanese' and asks him 'what he is thinking about now'. The girl clashes with the actors as she tries to make a film with a woman she admires as the protagonist. In the process of fighting both inside and outside herself, the two meet by chance with a camera in hand. The film depicts the two people, each with their own 'blood-sun problem', reaching an answer through pain, comfort and other previously unknown methods, without haste and with gentleness.

With an ice-cream cone, a warm summer. A young man and woman live together. During the hot summer, the man is engaged in manual labour. The woman stays at home and sleeps. The only time she goes out is when she gets a phone call from the man who forgot his lunch. She takes her lunch to the construction site, waits until the work is finished and rides home on the back of her bicycle. The next day she sleeps again, and that's how she lives. One day, the woman wakes up comfortably. When she comes to, she finds an ice cube on her forehead. Her lipstick, which she had been unable to decide on no matter how much she applied, is now perfectly matched. She has a good feeling. Getting up, getting dressed, walking along the dusty road, nibbling on ice cream... The film has a concise and powerful charm that flows throughout, symbolised by the movements of the main female character. After watching the film, you will feel that 'taking a nap is also a way of living straight'.

A people who mourn their own deaths. A man is walking carrying a hearse. His steps stop at a grave. The man buries the hearse he has been carrying in the hole and lies down in it. The closed hearse is covered with soil, by whoever's hand, it was. At the same time, a number of hearses identical to the man's are quietly washed out to sea. The rituals of the protagonists, who are presumably not of high culture, towards their own life and death are the height of simplicity and holiness. The camera quietly following them has the power to make us wonder if such practices really exist. A beautiful and sad poetic portrayal of death.

It's not a coincidence that the two of us met, it's inevitable. A woman who lives with a sense of loneliness, where no one pays attention to her. A woman lives with such loneliness. One day, she meets a man who can control balloons, and is fascinated by him. They find a castle on the outskirts of town and start to live together. It is a dream come true that seems to last forever for the woman. But it is the man who puts an end to them. But there is a perfect partner who does not need words or time to understand and to whom she can entrust eternity. This is the hope of the protagonist, who seems to be too innocent, entrusted with the mathematical symbol "∞", which represents a series of beads and strings. Can the balloon man become half of ∞?

What colour is black? What colour is white? Hideo, who has been blind since birth, likes to have his wife Izumi recite Rimbaud's poem "Vowels" to him. On the day of his eye operation, when the bandages will be removed in three days' time, he asks Izumi to recite the poem in a state of heightened anticipation and anxiety. Rimbaud's poem, which begins "A is black, woo is white, ae is red...", was the starting point for this work, which confirms the "seeing" in everyday life: explaining a painting, watching a video, going for a jog. Gradually, even for the "sighted" spectator, ordinary scenery such as a wire in the sky or a vending machine at night begins to look beautiful. It is as if the "will to see" is the reason why we "really see".

Even in death, he stalks me Ando is a timid boy who suddenly finds himself accused by his gloomy classmate Arai of breaking a promise he didn't make. The next day, Ando goes to visit him. The next day, he is told by a visiting detective that Arai has committed suicide. From that day on, the supposedly dead Arai begins to disrupt Ando's life. In a series of well-crafted episodes, Ando shows us the two things that ordinary people fear the most: "being a bit strange" and "being rumoured to be a bit strange". However, the film's humour, which is on the edge of psycho, such as Arai's vivacity after his death, leaves a strange taste that straddles the line between funny and scary.

White clouds drift across a blue sky. It takes place at Jounenji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. The son of the priest spends his day in a daze, doing nothing. The only one who comes to see him is an older man who likes to drink. The season passes quietly as the two drink together... Spring with its greenery, summer with its festival music, autumn with its moonlight, winter with its snow. The film is a visual poem that depicts the passage of time, incorporating seasonal scenes. The depth of the picture created by the precise framing, the fixed camera that captures the subtle changes in the wind and light, and the sound recording that even captures the rustling of the leaves, all combine to create a "drama" that can only be described as cinematic.

A young man sees something by the river. It's a shot of the girl he loves with another man. The young man has been dumped! He bites his lip and remembers those glorious days of love. And now, in order to express his anger, his frustration, his sadness and his regret, he comes up behind them... The word for "lost love" is "persistent". The story is about the youthfulness and innocence of a man who has lost his persistence. The frustration of youthful immaturity. The uncool and shameful part of the male sex, and the love for it. The melancholy and unhurried narrative suddenly comes to an unexpected end, and the audience realises that this is a very short and hilarious coming-of-age graffiti.

Walking through a dark cave. I met a man. He handed me a gun and said, "You can have this. You can shoot me and run away, but if you really want to escape you have to shoot yourself."

Michiko, a high school student with no friends and no family to talk to, often goes to the riverbank by herself. There, she meets her childhood friend Yukio, who dropped out of high school to work at a factory, two bad kids, an old man who fishes for fish in the river, which are said to kill you if you eat them, and an old woman who keeps chanting "Nan mai dabu" to the river. One day, Ochan is nowhere to be seen and the bad kids tell Michiko that he died after eating the fish he caught. The film is distinguished by the characters who do not appear on screen, and by the depth of its direction, which makes us imagine that Michiko and Yukio will eventually become a strange old woman and an old man. The subtly textured black-and-white screen makes the rough but wry dialogue all the more interesting.

A short film from the 18th Pia Film Festival.