Eyewitness accounts of the tsunami that devastated Japan in March 2011, captured by the people who kept filming as the cataclysmic events unfolded around them.
06 Aug 2007
Steven Okazaki presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first -- and hopefully last -- uses of nuclear weapons in war. Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath.
07 Jan 1999
Japan is a country of steep mountains surrounding wide flat plains where people have lived for thousands of years. On the largest plain lies the country's largest freshwater lake, Lake Biwa, which is not at all far from Japan's ancient, capital city of Kyoto. The slopes that stretch down towards the lake have been terraced. Here rice seedlings need shallow water in which to grow, and the neat, meticulously constructed paddy fields provide just this. Some of them have been cultivated continuously for thousands of years. Alongside them stand patches of woodland where, for centuries, the people have found their fuel and their food. This is a land that has been touched by people, yet the people tread lightly upon it. It's a land that has been ruled for centuries by the demands of the rice, yet it's still dominated by the rhythmic cycle of the seasons. Here is a landscape that the Japanese people hold so close to their hearts that they have a special word for it: Satoyama.
No overview found
10 Nov 2022
Devastating hurricanes, torrential rains, the inexorably rising waters: coastal megacities are now up against the wall. The filmmakers have chosen three emblematic cities: New York, Singapore and Rotterdam. Cities that each face unique problems and must revisit their relationship with water in order to survive on the long run. In 50 years, all surge barriers in the world will be out of order. What solutions will then remain for coastal cities?
17 Aug 1994
This film is about Japanese women, escape, glamour and dreams. The Takarazuka Revue is an enormously successful spectacular where the all-women cast create fantasies of erotic love and sensitive men. It is also a world for young girls desperate to do something different with their lives. In return for living a highly disciplined and reclusive existence, they will be adored and envied by many thousands of Japanese women. They will look, act and behave like young men while having no real men in their lives. Dream Girls explores the nature of sexual identity and the contradictory tensions that face young women in Japan today.
15 Feb 2020
Archaeologist Raksha Dave and historian Dan Snow return to Pompeii to gain special access to a variety of new excavations, including two never-before-seen discoveries.
02 Aug 2004
Every drift fans knows that despite the growing popularity of drift-racing, the heart of the ride will always be the Touge (mountain pass), and in this release Nomuken leads the JDM Option team through the very origins of Japanese drifting. As an added bonus, the JDM Option crew also shares a mysterious video sent in by an unidentified street racer who rockets along the Tomei Expressway at speeds in excess of 300km/h.
18 Jun 2016
This documentary film follows for 22 years a nine-member family involved in the manufacturing of Udon in the Goto Islands, Nagasaki prefecture. Mr. Toru Inuzuka called by nickname "Tora-san" is making famous 'Goto Udon' and natural salt on the island on which the depopulation is progressing. Seven children get up at 5 o'clock every morning, helping to make udon, and go to school. Children's help is recorded on the time card, and it is pocket money for children. The film talks about children's growth, marriage, childbirth, homecoming, and parting. The 22 years of familiarity of the family is drawn.
22 Jan 2006
Welcome to The Great Happiness Space: Rakkyo Café. The club's owner, Issei (22), has a staff of twenty boys all under his training to become the top escorts of Osaka's underground love scene. During their training, they learn how to dress, how to talk, how to walk, and most importantly, how to fake relationships with the girls who become their source of income. Join us as Osaka's number one host boy takes us on a journey through the complex and heartrenching world of love for sale in the Japanese underground.
09 Oct 1997
No overview found
07 Jun 1963
A modern geisha travels through Japan trying to find a job as entertainer, and ends up by finding love and a job as ama, a pearl diver.
31 Jul 2009
The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.
01 Jan 1999
Documentary about the world of the Japanese geisha. Unattainable by all but the wealthy and powerful, geisha are the ultimate massagers of the male ego. Behind the delicate fan and enigmatic smile can also be found a darker side to the geisha story, including treachery and suicide.
A personal documentary that tracks the construction of America's collective memory (or lack of one) of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It follows the obscure histories of specific photos and photographers, both Japanese and American, who visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bombings, counterposing this visual legacy with the stories of survivors, whose practice of speaking to small groups of students offers a modest but powerful counter-history to the official record.
19 Jan 1991
Ring of Fire is about the immense natural force of the great circle of volcanoes and seismic activity that rings the Pacific Ocean and the varied people and cultures who coexist with them. Spectacular volcanic eruptions are featured, including Mount St. Helens, Navidad in Chile, Sakurajima in Japan, and Mount Merapi in Indonesia.
17 Jan 2005
Using never-before-seen footage, Japan's War In Colour tells a previously untold story. It recounts the history of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective, combining original colour film with letters and diaries written by Japanese people. It tells the story of a nation at war from the diverse perspectives of those who lived through it: the leaders and the ordinary people, the oppressors and the victims, the guilty and the innocent. Until recently, it was believed that no colour film of Japan existed prior to 1945. But specialist research has now unearthed a remarkable colour record from as early as the 1930s. For eight years the Japanese fought what they believed was a Holy War that became a fight to the death. Japan's War In Colour shows how militarism took hold of the Japanese people; describes why Japan felt compelled to attack the West; explains what drove the Japanese to resist the Allies for so long; and, finally, reveals how they dealt with the shame of defeat.
05 Jan 2010
What is peace? What is coexistence? And what are the basis for them? PEACE is a visual-essay-like observational documentary, which contemplates these questions by observing the daily lives of people and cats in Okayama city, Japan, where life and death, acceptance and rejection are intermingled.
20 Jul 2017
A journey into the unique, often bizarre, world of Japanese cat culture. Cat themed cafes, bars, temples, cat islands, cats with human jobs, cat friendly businesses, and the origins of the iconic beckoning cat statue.
11 Nov 2007
Global warming in context. What the climate of the past tells us about the climate of the future.
20 Jan 2008
"Trouble the Water" takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall--just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her Ninth Ward neighbors trapped in the city. Weaving an insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking, it is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes--two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.