Films with: Chiaki, Minoru

Bas-fonds The lower depths /

Les bas-fonds (93 min.): A Baron, forced by circumstances, gives up his life of luxury and to takes up residence in the slums of Paris. The Baron observes the frustrated romance between Wasska Pepel and Natacha, the thwarted dreams of an actor, and the oppressive cruelties of landlord Kostileff. Donzoko (125 min.): Sutekichi, a vulgar, comical thief takes up residence in a slum flophouse inhabited by many eccentric, destitute people. Osugi, the cruel landlady, and her sister, Okayo, both desire him, and fight each other over him. Set in Edo-period Japan.

DVD 3354

Ikimono no kiroku I live in fear /

An elderly and wealthy industrialist is driven to madness over fears of a nuclear attack. In a futile attempt to save his family he pressures them to leave Japan and move to the rain forest in Brazil where he believes they will be safe. His family, complacent and cynical, is outraged and move to have him declared insane.

DVD 6375

Kakushi toride no san akunin Hidden fortress /

A princess must escape across enemy lines with the royal treasure, guarded only by a loyal general and two greedy peasants.

DVD 1562

Rashōmon

Set in the Middle Ages, the nature of truth and subjective reality are probed in a series of flashbacks from four viewpoints to present the case history of a man's murder and the rape of his wife by a bandit.

DVD 1684

Seven samurai

Tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire seven out-of-work warriors to protect them from invading bandits.

DVD 6

Three films by Hiroshi Teshigahara

Pitfall: When a miner leaves his employer and treks out with his young son to become a migrant worker, he finds himself moving from one eerie landscape to another, intermittently followed (and photographed) by an enigmatic man in a clean, white suit, and eventually coming face-to-face with his inescapable destiny. Woman in the dunes: An amateur entomologist leaves Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle that resides in a remote, vast desert. When he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. The face of another: Okuyama, after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist's radical experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations.

DVD 4824