Typhoon Club

Typhoon Club 1985

6.50

Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the five-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly-liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.

1985

Funeral Parade of Roses

Funeral Parade of Roses 1969

7.50

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

1969

Pastoral: To Die in the Country

Pastoral: To Die in the Country 1974

7.50

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.

1974

Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets

Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets 1971

7.40

An experimental, psychedelic odyssey through Japanese subculture experienced via the eyes of a disillusioned young man, who must contend with intense familial dysfunction, psychosexual alienation, and existentialist malaise.

1971

Distant Thunder

Distant Thunder 1981

6.80

A young man living on growing tomatoes in a greenhouse in a residential area. Tomato cultivation is as doomed as his personal life where he tries to keep alive his romance with the eccentric Kaede and parents selected fiancee Ayako.

1981

Double Suicide of Sonezaki

Double Suicide of Sonezaki 1978

6.80

Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.

1978

Demons

Demons 1971

7.70

Tells the story of the samurai Gengobe, who seeks revenge after falling prey to the schemes of a geisha and her husband.

1971

Youth - Part II

Youth - Part II 1979

5.00

Isamu, a star athlete in high school, becomes a race cyclist. He wins his debut races, but soon his opponents see through his lack of strategy and beat him easily. Isamu's maths teacher, a race cycling freak, says he knows the solution to Isamu's problem. But will Isamu listen to him?

1979

Farewell to the Ark

Farewell to the Ark 1984

7.00

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.

1984

Zigeunerweisen

Zigeunerweisen 1980

6.50

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.

1980

Death at an Old Mansion

Death at an Old Mansion 1975

6.10

A woman and her bridegroom are found murdered in their bed the day after their wedding. It had snowed overnight and the killer left no tracks. It is up to an amateur detective to figure out what happened. Carefully and systematically, he pieces together the clues in this locked room mystery.

1975

Death by Hanging

Death by Hanging 1968

7.40

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

1968

Poem

Poem 1972

7.00

The ascetic houseboy of a Japanese lawyer bears witness to the secretive sexual relationship between the lawyer's assistant and the maid, the lawyer's wife's sexual dissatisfaction, and the arrival of the lawyer's brother, who has a plan for the family's land and property.

1972

The Wanderers

The Wanderers 1973

5.70

Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three ronin in feudal Japan who wander from castle to castle, selling their services to whichever lord will fill their rice bowls. Though they use the servants' entrance, they still feel themselves bound by the samurai code of Bushido; and this tension leads to tragedy.

1973

The Crazy Family

The Crazy Family 1984

6.60

The Kobayashi family finally are able to move out of their tiny, cramped Tokyo apartment to the suburban house of their dreams. But things are not as perfect as they seem: the house is infested by termites and the family starts going crazy. As the Kobayashi's house begins to crumble, so does the sanity of its inhabitants. Father Katsuhiko takes it upon himself to keep them from the asylum… at any cost.

1984

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief 1969

4.60

In Tokyo's Shinjuku district, the lives of a young man prone to theft, a young woman he meets at a bookstore, and a kabuki actor intersect.

1969

Mandala

Mandala 1971

6.00

Two university students from Kyoto decide to swap partners and spend the night in an isolated motel. However, one of the couples is attacked. Desperate for answers, they search for the attackers and come across a cult that promotes sexual freedom.

1971

Tsugaru Folksong

Tsugaru Folksong 1973

7.20

A young girl is being asked about a man with whom she was keeping company, as her grandmother plays a lament on a shamisen. Then the focus changes to a couple arriving from Tokyo - the woman returning to her home, the man an escapee from the yakuza. The man doesn't seem to mind when the woman sells her favours to tourists at the local bar, just as she seems to take his attentions to Yuki, a blind girl, with equanimity.

1973

Himiko

Himiko 1974

7.20

The myth of the Sun Goddess who founded Japanese society is seen through the lens of a modern view of history.

1974

The Ceremony

The Ceremony 1971

7.00

Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.

1971