Koshiro Otsu

This odd three-parter purports to map the metaphysics of the interpersonal universe, dividing its trio of tales into three, different-toned “planets.”

Documentary filmmaker Makoto Sato offers this reflection on the life and career of Edward Said, the deeply influential literary and cultural critic, Columbia University academic, and outspoken advocate for displaced Palestinians, of whom he was one. Exploring the landscapes of Said's childhood and how they influenced his philosophy, this film features rare footage of Said and interviews with many of his colleagues, including Noam Chomsky.

1980 Japanese film distributed by Shochiku.

Film distributed by ATG.

This is a film about seven artists. It's also a film about seven people who are mentally handicapped. In the course of this touching film, we discover how art may provide a route to the human interior.

An unusual family portrait questioning the definitions of art, family, and what it means to be disabled. Imamura Hanako is a 22-year-old girl with severe autism. Once a week she attends a painting class, where she paints pictures in oils. Every evening after dinner, she creates what her mother Chisa has named “food art.” This may only involve arranging the leftovers from the day’s meal on the floor or a tray, but Chisa records the works every day, accumulating some thousands of photographs. The collection of photographs has now been exhibited around the country. Following Hanako’s daily life in the routine of the four members of the Imamura family, we watch as a portrait of a “very ordinary” family unfold.

In 1968, Ogawa decided to form Ogawa Productions and locate it at the newly announced construction site of Narita International Airport in a district called Sanrizuka. Ogawa chose to locate his company in the most radical of the villages, Heta. Some farmers immediately sold their land; others vehemently protested and drew the support of social movements across the country. Together they clashed with riot police sent in to protect surveyors, who were plotting out the airport. Summer in Sanrizuka is a messy film – its chaos communicating the passions and actions on the ground.

This film is a record of the first Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It reflects the various ways the festival was given shape by nascent global changes embodied by Perestroika, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and many other contemporaneous events.

A galvanising documentary about the organised resistance of a group of students barricaded at the Takasaki City University of Economics. The university student struggles at the end of the 1960s in Japan were the culmination of over a decade of protests, social dissent and political unrest. All this gave energy to the student movement, which displayed original and sustained forms of organisation and resistance against the government and which would spread to universities all over the country. Together with the filmmakers of the recently formed collective Jieiso, Ogawa Shinsuke joined a group of students barricading themselves inside the Takasaki City University of Economics. Shot over the course of a year, this film documents the nature of the political discussion and organisation as well as the fierce debates going on among the students and their violent struggles with the authorities. Credit: ICA London

Starring Kazuo Ohno, an inspirational figure in Butoh dance.

In the final hours of the Pacific War, Okinawa was the destination for Korean men conscripted as “military laborers” and Korean women taken as “comfort women.” Little is known about the number of casualties or their experiences. In 1989, Park Soonam started to track down the survivors of the Battle of Okinawa to record their testimonies. In 1990, Park visits Korea in search of former “military laborers” who had survived Okinawa and repatriated to Korea. The survivors vividly recount their experiences of their compatriots’ murder and about the “comfort women” to the Zainichi Korean female director. The film zeroes in on the murder of Korean “military laborers” and the presence of “comfort women” in Okinawa via testimonies of former Japanese soldiers.

Fujishita Kumi is an ordinary office lady. Longing to escape her poor fishing village for a life in the city, she came to Tokyo. One day while alone in the office, she's spotted rolling up her pantyhose by the window cleaner Kurata Katsuo. This was to be their first encounter. Completely enchanted by Kumi, Katsuo does everything he can to get close to her. Katsuo is a man with a terrible past. With the death of his coal miner father, his family was broken up and he was forced to follow in his father's footsteps laboring away in the mud. In spite of this, Katsuo still has dreams. He dreams of living in Resiporuko, a utopian fantasyland that exists only in his imagination. When Katsuo and Kumi finally meet they find themselves unable to communicate. Katsuo spends all his time talking about Resiporuko with a starry look in his eyes, while Kumi dreams of living the high life in the city. One day when the two travel to the seashore, they discover a wounded seagull.

A feature-length documentary that witnesses twenty-seven survivors of the Battle of Okinawa break their silence to testify the truth about the tragedy of “gyokusai,” forced group suicide, of Korean “military laborers” and “comfort women” brought from Korea. Just how were Okinawa citizens pressured and forced to commit group suicide in the final hours of the Pacific War, and what led to the near complete destruction of Korean military laborers and comfort women? Twenty years in the making since 'Song of Ariran -voices from Okinawa' (1991), Park Soo-nam’s third documentary returns to the subject of Korean military laborers and comfort women in Okinawa.

The Silence narrates the struggle of fifteen "comfort women"—former sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII—for recognition and reparation. The "comfort women" issue has previously been treated almost exclusively within the framework of Korean nationalism. The Silence will provide insight into the ways in which nationalism and the emergence of post-war Asian nation-states have hindered the understanding of "comfort women" narratives through Zainichi Korean documentary filmmaker Soo-nam Park's point of view.

Documentary filmed by young directors in Japan that was shaken by the US-Japan security pact struggles and student disputes. An illusionary image comes back to life for the first time in 34 years. (Produced in 1968 but unreleased until 2002).

Living in a slum damaged by the atomic bomb and watching elderly first-generation zainichi hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) pass away one after another, Pak felt compelled to break their silence with this documentary, her first. Using up all her savings and going into debt, she teamed up with cinematographer Otsu Koshiro and collected these testimonials from zainichi North and South Koreans living in Hiroshima and South Korean hibakusha visiting Japan for medical treatment.

Before World War II, Ikego village was an idyllic agriculture community. The Imperial Navy took over the village and the hills to build the largest ammunition preserve in Asia. When Japan lost, these facilities were taken over by the US Navy, and are now housing for the American soldiers.

The first in a series of independent documentaries that Tsuchimoto made of the mercury poisoning incident in Minamata, Japan.

A film made with a group of student and worker activists during the Haneda 1967 protests against Japan’s cooperation with the US and the Vietnam war. The film subverts the conventions of mainstream television news coverage to investigate in great detail the killing of a young protester during clashes with the riot police and thus denounces the increasing use of repressive violence by the government.

In a bustling shopping district, a humble tailor accompanies his daughter for an afternoon out — until a trio of thugs begin harassing her in broad daylight. Unable to stay passive amidst the crowd’s indifference, he intervenes with tragic results. Two years later, having served time for excessive self-defense, he remains haunted by both the violence and the apathy of society. A veteran detective, still unsettled by the case, notices the tailor quietly providing money to the same thugs. What drives him? A modern horror tale with social undertones, adapted from Futaro Yamada’s short story “The Black Curtain,” this episode merges psychological unease, moral ambiguity, and a chilling critique of bystander indifference.

This documentary follows one of the creators of the japanese dance Butoh, Kazuo Ohno, 95, and his son, Yoshito Ohno.

In 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, the conservative Japanese government is pressing ahead with plans to revise the nation's constitution and jettison its no-war clause, Article 9. This documentary places the ongoing debate over the constitution in an international context:

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.