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

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

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

Double Suicide

Double Suicide 1969

7.00

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.

1969

Dear Summer Sister

Dear Summer Sister 1972

4.30

14-year-old Sunaoko travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. Their guide, a beer-guzzling ex-soldier, takes them to the locale’s tourist attractions, quickly delving into the underlying scars of the island’s wartime history.

1972

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

Funeral Parade of Roses

Funeral Parade of Roses 1969

7.50

In late 60s Tokyo, Eddie, a young trans woman, is the favourite of Gonda, the owner of the bar where she works. This relationship provokes the jealousy of Gonda's mistress, Leda, the bar's matron. Eddie and Gonda decide to get rid of her...

1969

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Emperor Tomato Ketchup 1971

5.60

In a Japanese colony, children overthrow their parental guardians and attempt to form a new society. Their plan spirals out of control and they are soon lost in a web of sexual deviation and violence.

1971

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

Ecstasy of the Angels

Ecstasy of the Angels 1972

5.50

A militant revolutionary group is torn apart by betrayal as its members descend into paranoia and sexual decadence.

1972

The Assassination of Ryoma

The Assassination of Ryoma 1974

5.00

Story of the last three days in the life of Sakamoto Ryoma (1836-1867), imperial loyalist who tried to unite the Choshu and Satsuma clans and prepared the way for the Meiji Restoration (1868).

1974

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

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

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

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

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

The Heart

The Heart 1973

7.80

The relationship between a rich young student and his lower class friend changes when they start to live both at a guest house. Both will be attracted towards Iko, the beautiful daughter of their landlady.

1973

This Transient Life

This Transient Life 1970

7.50

Near a remote Buddhist monastery, a young man falls in love with his sister and gets her pregnant. After a monk finds out, the young man becomes an assistant to a master sculptor, only to proceed to complicate matters with his affairs.

1970

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