Rio Kishida

Naran

Naran and his five brothers and sisters are returning to the family farm for summer. During the rest of the year, they must attend school in the city. Once they arrive, the family heads off to summer pastures for their horses and sheep. One day, Naran meets a lone minstrel and hears the tale of Sukh and his white horse who win the great Naadam horse race. Naran is deeply moved and swears that he will compete in the race with his own beloved white horse.

Akio Jissoji’s Museum of Wonders - Volume of the Museum

A bizarre mystery created under the direction of director Jissoji. The mysterious and strange world of Jissoji is brought back to life here!

Harikomi

When a team of detectives lose the trail of a murderer, they decide to keep an eye on the suspect’s ex-lover, who is trapped in an abusive marriage.

My Heart Belongs to Daddy

A young woman moves in with her estranged father after her mother passes away.

Marquis de Sade’s Prosperities of Vice

A decadent count in 1920′s Japan becomes obsessed with the life and works of the Marquis de Sade. He creates a theatre to show plays adapted from the notorious writer’s novels and recruits thieves, prostitutes and low lives to act out his fantasies on stage for the delectation of his rich, jaded friends. In search of new sensations the nobleman orders one of the actors, on pain of death, to make love to the nobleman’s wife while he watches. Unfortunately, this incursion of real life into his fantasy world will have dire consequences for the count and his divinely decadent coterie.

Summer Vacation 1999

Summer Vacation tells the story of four teenage students who spend their summer vacation at school – unsupervised and untouched by the outside world.

Bedtime Eyes

Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.

Blue Lake Girl

Nagare, a painter who wanted to commit a lover’s suicide with Mizue, the wife of his friend and patron Takigawa. Growing afraid at the last moment, he doesn’t go through with it – but Mizue sinks to the bottom of Blue Lake. Some time later, Nagare follows an invitation by Takigawa, who claims to have forgiven everything. To Nagare’s shock, Takigawa’s new wife, Ameko, looks exactly like Mizue. While staying as Takigawa’s guest, Nagare becomes haunted by Mizue’s ghost, who wants to be reunited with him at the bottom of Blue Lake.

Allusion: Reincarnation Story

Musical film: Hiromi Go plays a warrior, a gigolo, and an officer spread across a thousand years of history

Farewell to the Ark

A surreal, isolated village sees its inhabitants gradually leave behind their mutual traditions and superstitions as they leave for the city. Among them are two cousins who love each other and who get into a quarrel with other villagers.

Fruits of Passion

A girl named O loves a rich, and much older man. She is subjected to a variety of humiliating experiences to prove her unconditional obedience to him in a Chinese brothel. A poor boy sees her and falls in love with her. To get the money needed to sleep with her, he takes part in rebellious acts.

Path of the Beast

17 year old Saki lives in a run-down shack with her mom, who survives by pushing a food cart from dawn to dusk. Saki has dropped out of school, and when she's not helping her mother selling noodles in the streets, she's playing flesh-games with boyfriend Sotoo. In her spare time, the girl also entertains a truck driver named Ataru. She believes her promiscuity is a trait inherited from her mom. Determined to improve her lot in life, Saki decides to stop seeing the two guys.

Private Collections

Three stories. A solitary sailor falls from his boat and washes ashore on a tropical island. While seeking rescue, he's found by a nearly naked woman who is playful and compliant. He decides to erase his signs of distress and remain on the island. What awaits? In the second, an adolescent searches for the words of a nursery rime he remembers bits of. His journey takes him into dreams, sexual awakening, and Oedipal fantasy. Third, a man of wealth in late-nineteenth century Paris hires a prostitute for the night. She's also cabaret performer and takes him to her room. He fears he's about to be robbed. What's her secret?

Grass Labyrinth

Akira is haunted by a "bouncing ball" song that he remembers his mother singing when he was a small child, and now on the verge of a sexually active adulthood, he wants to find the origins of the song. The young man ostensibly wanders into a time-warp in which aspects from his childhood and adulthood mix together. In this never-never land he comes across a beautiful woman/witch who is lost inside the labyrinth of her mansion, just as the young man is lost in the labyrinth of time — and on some levels, perhaps the labyrinth of his subconscious.

An Attempt to Describe the Measure of a Man

Using bluescreen video techniques, Terayama playfully—and with a silent film theatricality—posits a series of postmodern vignettes featuring realities-within-realities as his protagonist attempts some kind of relationship with a nude woman on the screen-within-the-screen. In his struggles to “free” her, he exposes the absurd flimsiness, deceptiveness and mutability of both the cinema experience and our human dimension.

Shintokumaru

Shuji Terayama and J.A.Seazer's phantasmagoric folk-psych-symph-prog-rock opera. Historical Tenjo Sajiki performance from 1978.

Boxer

In the midst of a match, a successful boxer - Hayato, has had enough of the sport. He lets himself get knocked, quits boxing, leaving his wife and start living alone with his mangy dog. One day a young mediocre boxer knocks at the door and wants to be Hayato's apprentice.

Wet Lust: Opening the Tulip

Akira and Hiroshi are two lowlives who work at a pachinko parlour. Hiroshi is a ladies' man but always loses at pachinko. Akira is a virgin at 25 but always wins. Hiroshi tries to get Akira laid with little success but things change when Akira is informed of a 88 million yen inheritance. But only if he can get married.

Pastoral: To Die in the Country

A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.