A series of special situations involves a gay cop who encounters ambiguous, erotic games and sex between strangers. Filmed entirely without dialogue.
Tag: JAPAN
People from all walks of life (a high-school student, a middle-aged businessman, a yakuza chief, etc.) all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening. At the stroke of midnight, the lost ship emerges from the sea and they are given a brief time to say their final words to their lost loved ones, before the deceased must once again board the ship and it sinks back into the depths.
A promising post-graduate literature student is transformed into a psychotic killer following the suicide of his father and a sleazy affair by his mother with a younger man. One of the first “lonely hit-man” or “lonely killer” films.
A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young girl who has a ritual of repeating “Tomorrow is my birthday” everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.
Produced at the height of Japan’s economic boom of the 1980’s, Yama documents the struggles of unionised day-labourers in the San’ya district of Tokyo, on the frontlines of a violent class war. It is a film for the workers, intended to function as a weapon in their struggle – one that cost director Sato his life. On December 22 1985, during filming, he was murdered by Yakuza gangsters whom Sato intended to expose for their criminal involvement in the restructuring of the job market. A collective of directors headed by Kyoichi Yamaoka finished the film, before Yamaoka, too, was later murdered.
——UPGRADED——
This wry chamber piece from director Mikio Naruse focuses on a couple whose pet peeves and minor irritations escalate into major rifts and animosity.
When man-about-town Saheiji finds himself unable to pay for a bill at a brothel, he is forced to remain there to work off his debt. However he finds his wit and resourcefulness enable him to turn this situation to his advantage, as he interacts with a whole range of characters, from rivalling courtesans to political activists.