Films from Japan
This wide-ranging collection is brimming with horror and thrillers, romance, historical drama, hybrid films, and documentaries. Nagisa Oshima’s 100 Years of Japanese Cinema provides an entry point, taking us from Japanese silent cinema and through the postwar Golden Age to the Japanese New Wave, tracing the movement from melodrama to greater realism and beyond. Under the banner of Daiei Gothic, we present a Ghost Stories trilogy, including The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), The Bride from Hades (1968), and The Snow Woman (1968). Other highlights include Rear Window rival Elegant Beast (1962) by Yuzo Kawashima, Shohei Imamura’s existential procedural A Man Vanishes (1967), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s fantasy romance Air Doll (2009), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s disturbing series Penance (2014), and the soberingly sinister Plan 75 by Chie Hayakawa (2022). The most recent entry is Hisayo Saika’s thought-provoking exposé on culture wars and growing government intervention in Education and Nationalism (2023) — an issue that touches not only Japan but countries all over the world.
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The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto
Directed by Kihachiro Kawamoto • Animation • 2014 • 99 minutes
Kimstim is proud to present this collection of short films from one of the world's greatest stop-motion animators: Kihachiro Kawamoto. Famous for his beautiful, expressive puppets, Kawamoto began his career in the 1950s. Honing his s...
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The Book of the Dead
Directed by Kihachiro Kawamoto • Animation • 2014 • 70 minutes
Master animator Kihachiro Kawamoto's tour de force adventure tale of a young noble girl in 8th-century Japan who leaves her home to follow the apparition of an executed prince in this ravishing film of beauty and mysticism.
As Buddh...
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Tatsumi
Directed by Eric Khoo • Animation • With Tetsuya Bessho, Yoshihiro Tatsumi • 2011 • 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...
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Hanagatami (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi)
Directed by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi • Drama • With Shunsuke Kubozuka, Tokio Emoto • 2017 • 169 minutes
In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film HAUSU was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be hi...
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Creepy
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yûko Takeuchi, Toru Baba • 2017 • 130 minutes
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made his name with classics CURE and BRIGHT FUTURE, gets back to his roots by putting the thumbscrews to the audience with his latest, CREEPY. A year after a botch...
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Vampire Clay
Directed by Soichi Umezawa • Drama • With Ena Fujita, Yuyu Makihara, Momoka Sugimoto • 2017 • 81 minutes
From Japanese special effects master Soichi Umezawa comes a singular horror experience in a wildly hilarious marriage of The Blob and The Evil Dead. After studying in Tokyo, Kaori returns to ...
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We Are Little Zombies
Directed by Makoto Nagahisa • Drama • With Keita Ninomiya, Mondo Okumura, Satoshi Mizuno, Sena Nakajima • 2019 • 120 minutes
When four young orphans—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—first meet, their parents’ bodies are being turned into dust, like fine Parmesan atop a plate of spaghetti Bologn...
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6 itemsPenance (series)
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Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Kyoko Koizumi, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Aoi • 2014 • 300 minutes
Japanese master of suspense Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s eerie, intense psychological thriller Penance (Shokuzai) unfolds on a sleepy small town playground, when a mysterious stranger approaches a group...
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6 itemsShôhei Imamura
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The only Japanese director to twice win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Shohei Imamura has been described by The New York Times as "one of the most significant Japanese filmmakers of the postwar generation." Imamura began his career as an assistant to legendary director Yasujiro Ozu, ...
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7 itemsKiyoshi Kurosawa
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Born in 1955 in Kobe, Kiyoshi Kurosawa made his feature film directorial debut in 1983 with Kandagawa Wars. He attracted global attention with Cure (1997), following it with notable works License to Live (1998), Barren Illusion (1999), and Charisma (1999). Pulse was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize at ...
