Films with: Igawa, Hisashi

Madadayo

Set in postwar Japan, the film follows the last two decades in the life of Hyakken Uchida, a free spirited writer and teacher, highlighted by his relationship with his students who venerate him in his old age.

DVD 1399

Sanbiki no samurai Three outlaw samurai /

An offshoot of a Japanese television series of the same name, "Three outlaw samurai" is a classic in its own right. A wandering, seen-it-all ronin becomes entangled in the dangerous business of two other samurai hired to execute a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of a corrupt magistrate. With remarkable storytelling economy and thrilling action scenes, it's an expertly mounted tale of revenge and loyalty.

DVD 9657

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