A Very Straight Neck

On December 11, 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo piano performance will be streamed in the form of a concert. However, what we will experience that day is carefully recorded footage of Sakamoto performing a few pieces of music each day over the course of a week, that was then thoughtfully edited together. This is last performance.

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March 2023. Consisting of only Sakamoto and his piano, Opus features the final live performances of 20 songs that Sakamoto meticulously curated to encapsulate his distinguished 40-year career.

Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto weaves man-made and natural sounds together in his works. His anti-nuclear activism grew after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and his career only paused after a 2014 cancer diagnosis.

A live performance film capturing an intimate concert by composer, pianist and music producer Ryuichi Sakamoto in New York City. The performance marked the first public unveiling of Sakamoto’s new opus, async, hailed as one of the best albums of 2017 by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.

In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.

A raw, poetic self-portrait in which young, NYC-born Afro-Latina Rebeca “Beba” Huntt stares down historical, societal, and generational trauma.

Near-future Tokyo. Kou, through the help of his high school best friend, finds a surprising way to express his mounting frustration at the insidious forces of commercialism that are forcing out the neighbors he cares most about. Initially inspired by a prank that the writer-director Neo Sora (The Chicken, 2020) had pulled on him in his childhood, a sense of warm nostalgia and cold, material reality intermingle to tell a tale set in the not-so-distant future about disappearing spaces and the forces of policing and gentrification that drills this process forward.

On an unseasonably hot day in November, Hiro, a Japanese immigrant in New York City, decides to butcher a live chicken for dinner. While showing his visiting cousin Kei around, the pair encounter a medical emergency on the street. After they mishandle the situation and end up causing more harm than good, Hiro cannot bring himself to kill the chicken. Throughout, Kei observes his cousin’s new lifestyle as Hiro and his pregnant wife prepare for their move to Chinatown. As the day wears on, Hiro and Kei’s actions highlight how their lives are complicit in the structural violence that surrounds them.

A deeply personal portrait of one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in Japanese cinema: filmmaker, writer, and revolutionary Masao Adachi.

This documentary started as part of a photography project about the indigenous Ainu population in northern Japan, portraying people from tightly knit communities. They feel deeply connected by their culture and tradition. With gorgeous pictures, the directors explore how different generations of Ainu reflect on their identity after centuries of oppression.

Three Ethiopian sisters are living with an HIV diagnosis.

"My goal is not education, but liberation." In February 2024, a filmmaking workshop takes place in Fukushima under the guidance of the Hungarian master, Béla Tarr. Observing him mentor the students offers a glimpse into his unique perspective on cinema and his profound approach to the art of film.

Steinway Artist Jason Moran and Japanese pianist Dairo Suga – both of whom are some of world’s most forward-thinking and innovative pianists - perform at the Steinway factory as part of a special series launched in Tokyo in 2006. This performance took place on December 17, 2016.

Japanese composer and living legend Ryuchi Sakamoto shared a live home session titled “Impovistation for Sonic Cure”. This performance was broadcast via the program “Sonic Cure” produced by UCCA + Kuaishou to encourage isolated people in China on February 29th. Sakamoto wanted to share it with the people who are in isolation. It was filmed and edited by Zakkubalan.

Conversation between director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi, recorded in 2022.

In 1930s Europe, Ulrike and her faithful dog, Müzzi are climbing The Inconceivable Mountain. Ulrike meets a handsome soldier and discovers that all is not as it seems. Müzzi, for her part, descends into paranoia.