In 1908, Director/Producer Shozo Makino (father of Japanese cinema) directed and produced the first dramatic film in Kyoto. “Honnô-ji Gassen” was shot at Shinnyo-Do Temple. Considered a lost film.
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Mori Ranmaru
Oda Nobunaga
A place that seems out of time for everyday life, a long line of women waiting. And inside a room, three of them sitting... a cello piece transports them to their own experience of pleasure, body and eroticism. An exploration from a female perspective of the audiovisual and its ability to produce pleasure beyond narrative schemes. Female pleasure, liberation, feminism, gender, appropriation of the body, sexual freedom, women, cello, music, old age.
Tere travels to sell her napkins with her daughter Flor, who loses one of her new shoes. Tere is forced to leave her alone for a moment, a fact that changes her life completely.
On the day his mother dies, young gambler Jirocho swears in front of her grave that he'll never gamble again. But, that night, Jirocho heads to a gambling den, where he bets the condolence money for his mother's funeral. No surprise to learn he loses the lot. Not the hard-boiled yakuza story it seems, this is a comedy featuring many new artists who were making a name for themselves at the time.
John Stonehouse (William Russell) checks into a hotel, intending to commit suicide. But instead he winds up helping a girl, Gilberte Bonheur (Fritzi Brunette), out of a jam. He finds her bending over a man who she has apparently killed, and since he's about to kill himself anyway, he offers to assume the blame. Throw a valuable emerald into the works, and the fact that the dead man suddenly comes back to life, and Stonehouse -- not to mention the audience -- becomes thoroughly befuddled by it all. Everything clears up, however, when Gilberte gives him a theater ticket -- it turns out that everything he went through was the plot to a stage play, enacted in real life by the actors. The critics roasted the play, saying it wasn't true to life, and this was their proof that the situations really could happen. Gilberte retires from acting when Stonehouse proposes.
On a dystopian island, where the government has banned organic plant life, a man with an artificial flower shop grows real plants in secret, cultivating their surreal properties, trying to breathe some air into the smothering environment.
A young woman in love finds herself immersed in a state of confusion that leads her to feel suddenly alone.
Two child performers lose their money, but are saved by the masked avenger Kurama Tengu. When the children return the favor in foiling an attempt on the hero's life, they find themselves in need of protection once again...
A young woman becomes infatuated with the leading man of a traveling theatrical troupe. She sneaks away to join him in the next town, but her father forces her to return home...
In the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, there was a cute warrior, Souji Okita, who belonged to the armed police of the shogunate in Kyoto. Very few knew that Souji was not a boy, but a woman. Souji loved the vice-leader of the armed police, Toshizou Hijikata. Souji suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis and coughed up blood during a battle. Toshizou helped her but said that he did not care for the girl with a smell of blood. Souji had a real talent for swordsmanship and no one but Ryouma Sakamoto could compete with her. Ryouma was a liberal intellectual and tried to carry out a revolution without blood. However, the bloody Meiji Restoration broke out and Souji killed Ryouma who lost his dream. Because a friendship had sprung up between Toshizou and Ryouma, Toshizou got angry and slashed at Souji with a sword. Unwillingly, she unsheathed her sword and thought that she might get love if she was killed by the man she loved.
The director offers a rare glimpse of the actor and fashion muse Chloë Sevigny in the late 90s when she as an emerging ingénue. Shot on 16mm black and white, Sevigny plays air guitar and dress-up in a film that beautifully captures the spirit of the time.
The famed leader Oda Nobunaga had two right-hand men who contributed to unifying the nation. One was Akechi Mitsuhide and the other Kinoshita Tokichiro, both rivals of each other for higher promotions. Eventually Mitsuhide was recognized for his work and was given a castle. However, Nobunaga's ambition to conquer the nation did not allow Mitsuhide to live happily in his territory. That is when an idea flashed across Mitsuhide's mind… Akechi Mitsuhide, the man who was considered to be the most intelligent general of the warring states era. What was the truth about him, Oda Nobunaga's best general and murderer?
While he's receiving an enigmatic phone call from his girlfriend Francine, Thomas remembers the milestones of their relationship, from the very moment they met in a really strange way. A segment of “Paris, je t'aime” (2006).
A nostalgic woman confronts a stranger in her house, one who ultimately reveals their shared history and the love they have for one another.
A typist is shut in a safe by her married lover and later freed by a burglar.
Jasper (20), on the edge of adulthood , wanders around lost in the Port of Ghent. Fragments of a phone call betray a loss.
A voyeuristic journey through the homoerotic work of Alair Gomes.
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
Irish anti-homophobic bullying advertisement, created as part of BeLonG To Youth Services annual Up! LGBT Awareness Weeks.
The film tells about a young detective Zenigata Heiji who successfully solves a disgusting and unusual case involving the manufacture of counterfeit money.
Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.
A pretty young girl falls for an enigmatic, shy man who sweeps her off her feet. She becomes pregnant but is not allowed to tell him. His advisers are adamant. Back home, they have set up a wedding with the daughter of an antagonistic family and marriage will put an end to the blood feud between them.
Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.
In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
The "Academy Island Incident" in which four "kings" cross paths... Since then, Silver Clansmen Kuroh Yatogami and Neko have been searching for their master, Shiro. Without finding any clues to Shiro's whereabouts, the two became disheartened. However, one day, they see HOMRA members Rikio Kamamoto and Anna Kushina being chased by someone.
Barefoot and her friends decide to make a samurai movie, gather a unique cast and staff for the production, and try to screen it at their school festival.
A pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin.
The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped by the lord. Her husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to rescue her.
After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers.
8mm work directed by Norihiko Morinaga.
Wishing to find peace, Zatoichi travels to his old village but only finds trouble when he ends up in a love triangle and finds old scores have followed him home.
A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.
Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend’s obsession. Imamura’s comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time.
Set in 19th Century Japan a young samurai who finds himself in love with a farm girl leaves his home to begin a new life. He has to take stock of his new life when he is put to the test and ordered to kill a traitor who just happens to be his dearest friend.
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?
Before he was a protector, Kenshin was a fearsome assassin known as Battosai. But when he meets gentle Tomoe Yukishiro, a beautiful young woman who carries a huge burden in her heart, his life will change forever.
A man attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye.
A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.
Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.
Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.