Sumiko Haneda

Sumiko Haneda returns to film what will be the final bits of Akiko Kanda's life, documenting Kanda's will to dance as she struggles with terminal cancer.

Set in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, the tragic theme of the film is the destruction of millions of lives in the 13 years before Manchukuo collapsed with Japan’s World War II surrender in August 1945, and the years of suffering it brought in its wake.

The poignant focal point for this film is a cherry tree that is over 1400 years old. Beginning with the tree, the director then explores the families and environment around the tree. The editing and music contribute to the sense of a haunting past contained within the solid structure of an ancient natural wonder.

Documentary film from Japan.

This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying in Japan for the rest of his life. Mixed in with the career and loves of Moraes is the history of Portugal at home and in its colonies.

“I have three tasks in my life: to dance, to teach dance, and to create dance,” says the pioneering Japanese performer Akiko Kanda in this intimate portrait of creativity and individuality, After seeing a Martha Graham performance in college, Kanda left her family behind in Japan and arrived in New York City, where she studied under the legendary Graham and became a principal dancer with the troupe. Following the wiry artist as she moves from practice floor to performance hall, and from the cramped single-room apartment she lives in to a trip home to see her aging mother, director Sumiko Haneda reveals a woman who has rebelled against traditional ideals of marriage and motherhood, and who nearly single-handedly brought modern dance to Japan-and kept it alive. “When I die,” Kanda tells the director, “I will be content if I can just say, ‘I danced.'”

The care facilities for the elderly in a small town in Gifu prefecture, and the comparison with the welfare in Denmark, Sweden and Australia.

Documentary on pioneer Japanese feminist Hiratsuka Raicho