Directed by Eric Khoo • Animation • 2014 • 98 minutes
TATSUMI celebrates the life and work of Japanese comics artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi-a manga pioneer who elevated the genre to a new level of creative expression and adult realism. A comics-crazed teenager, Tatsumi began to get published and was able to support his poor family in postwar occupied Japan. He finds even greater inspiration after meeting his idol, the famous Disney-esque animator Osamu Tezuka. But despite his success, Tatsumi became dissatisfied with making whimsical children's comics. In the late 1950s, Tatsumi coined the term gekiga (dramatic pictures) and redefined the manga landscape with an alternative genre for adults. Realistic and disquieting, his work began to grapple with the darker aspects of life in his rapidly changing country-with stories that are perverse, shocking and darkly comic. A tribute to an artist who made comics cinematic, filmmaker Eric Khoo's (BE WITH ME) inventive animated drama brings Tatsumi's memoir A Drifting Life and five of his classic stories to life.
'CRITICS PICK! It's potent stuff, delving into pornography, incest, murder and mutilation in the company of alienated men and unhappy, sometimes cruel women.' - Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times
Directed by Kyoko Miyake • Documentary • 2017 • 88 minutes
"IDOLS" has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. TOKYO IDOLS—an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet ...
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1971 • 45 minutes
In Malaysia, Imamura follows one false lead after another as he tries to locate unreturned Japanese who had given up the culture of their birth to integrate with Malaysian society. These wrong turns take the filmmaker on a tour through...
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1971 • 50 minutes
Imamura has better luck in Thailand, where he brings together three unreturned soldiers to discuss their experiences during the war and after.
The three men—a farmer named Fujita and two doctors: Toshida and Nakayama—have responded ve...
