When an escort girl is found dead in the offices of a Japanese company in Los Angeles, detectives Web Smith and John Connor act as liaison between the company's executives and the investigating cop Tom Graham.

Legendary tea master Sen no Rikyu is faced with his warmongering lord's unrealistic pretensions.

The story of a Japanese man who as a 16-year-old went to Maui to work in the sugar cane fields in order to support his family back in Japan. Now 89 and still living in Hawaii he is visited by his granddaughter who brings him a letter from his disinherited and recently dead son. This brings back memories of his life with his wife and family following the attack on Pearl Harbor, in particular of his son who had gone off to join the war for the Americans.

Originally aired on Russian television, this five-part semi-documentary series tells the story of a Russian naval commander in charge of an Arctic-based ship. The film provokes a meditation on solitude and isolation, while revealing the daily duties associated with the ship. Voice-over narration by the commander, other sailors, and even a third-person voice provide the "confession" of the title.

A crippled kabuki player is taken into a strolling company of itinerant actors. An influential publisher notices his honest, bold drawings, and nurtures him despite persecution and betrayal. The film explores the eternal relationship between artist and producer, and describes the emanicipation of a man who refuses to let himself become the plaything of power and money.

Nagisa Oshima explores the first century of Japanese cinema.

A documentary of the Japanese film composer Toru Takemitsu, featuring interviews and clips from films he scored.

Exquisite exploration of landscape and Toru Takemitsu's music for a Japanese moss garden.

Chronicles the trials and tribulations of Oribe, the successor to tea-master Rikyu, Usu, his gardener, and Princess Goh, who attempt to balance artistic expression and duty amid political intrigue in feudal Japan.

In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie’s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours—a visit to a Frank Sinatra–loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster—and woven together by Richie’s narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner.

The story of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, based on Masuji Ibuse's novel.

A retelling of Emily Bronte's tale of vengeance and obsessive love, set in medieval Japan.

The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokagawa Period, a time in which appearences are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojo for the honor to perform the tea ceremony to celebrate the birth of an heir to the lord of their clan. To see the sacred tea scrolls Gonza promises to marry the daughter of the family which possesses them, even though he is unofficially engaged to another. When studying the scrolls with Osai, the mother of the house, Bannajo sneaks into the house and steals their obis and runs through the town proclaiming the two as adulterers.

In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.

Tatsuo, a reverent lumberjack, seeks to disrupt plans to build a marine park on his family land, instead promoting his traditions in reactionary ways.

A documentary that shows the production of Ran and discusses the film techniques of Kurosawa himself.

The work of Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí, as seen by Japanese New Wave director Hiroshi Teshigahara.

Documentary covering the 1946-48 Tokyo Trials.

'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.

Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin.

Through puppets and animation, a traveler tells his story of walking through Settsu, coming to the town of Ikuta. He asks if someone can show him the Seeker's Mound. Late that day, a solitary maiden says she will lead him there.

A very beautiful Japanese woman is in love with Persian carpets. She is being chased by lecherous Saburi Shin and a handsome young photographer. Lecherous Saburi Shin knows what she wants, and is able to produce it for her.

A married woman and her lover murder her husband and dump his body into a well. After a while, his ghost comes to haunt them while the local gossip grows stronger.

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed while she tours the country, even though the modern world imposes changes on people's behavior.

A detailed look at a Tokyo business tycoon (played by Shin Saburi) given a diagnosis of terminal cancer who must now re-assess his life and values.

A mountain man captures a beautiful, but a manipulative city woman and goes to excessive lengths to please her every whim.

A freestyle, imagined telling of the life of shaman queen Himiko, who falls in love with her half-brother, making her powers weaken thus putting her position to risk.

Medical student Himoto Haruo makes no compromises in resolving issues with his mother, his authoritarian department boss, and his girlfriend's abusive employer.

A Vietnam veteran deserts from the US Army while on leave in Japan.

Story is about a Tokyo girl looking round Okinawa island for her long-lost brother and finding he is the tourist guide with whom she has had an affair.

Two Jesuit priests encounter persecution when they travel to Japan in the 17th century to spread Christianity and to locate their mentor.

The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.

Upon receiving a shocking telegram from his cousin, a man recounts his early life, as a member of a broad family full of dark secrets that slowly reveal themselves through the clan ceremonies.

A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.

Various tales in the lives of Tokyo slum dwellers, including a mentally deficient young man obsessed with driving his own commuter trolley.

A doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan.

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. Contradictory evidence and the lack of clues soon render the case as virtually unsolvable, as the detective grows more and more frustrated.

During WWII a soldier is beaten so badly by a superior officer he is left deaf. After the war he is an inventor and meets this officer at the patent office. The man is still the bully he was.

A teenage goldsmith with a dark past tragically falls in love with a young nude model.

A man falls in love with the widow of a man he killed in a car accident. Eventually she falls in love with him in return.

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back.

A Japanese soldier deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her into sleeping with an older man for money.

A look inside the world of a young Japanese woman during the time of the Tokyo Olympiad (1964), from French New Wave Left Bank director Chris Marker.

Traveling to Africa in a cultural exchange program, a young Japanese engineer discovers a world completely unlike the one he knows. His interaction with the Africans he meets reveals to him that he has been living a lie, and that he is not the man he thought he was.

Epic saga of an idealistic land-owning family dealing with militarism, war, social change and economic reform.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.

Seeking revenge against the guard who tormented him, a young man returns to the island where he was imprisoned in reform school. But his plans for vengeance are disturbed when he encounters a strange and beautiful young woman.

This is the sequel to Jose Torres (1959), the portrayal of Puerto Rican boxer Jose Torres, who won a silver medal in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. We follow Torres from his training in preparation to challenge world lightweight champion Willie Pastrano, to the match and Torres’ victory in 1965. The contrast between the nervous Torres before the match, filmed in painstaking detail, and the first round, filmed in one shot, is striking.

Follows Ako, a 16 year old Japanese girl, as she spends time working in a bakery and going out with her friends.

"When human beings venture too far along a trail made by wild beasts, it is said, they quite often discover themselves on a road of no return." Based on the novel of the same name by Seichô Matsumoto.

A samurai warrior is haunted by the spirit of his first wife.

When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family.

The legendary samurai Sasuke Sarutobi gets caught in a web of political intrigue, deception and espionage during the early 17th century.

A lovelorn woman obsessively pursues a man wherever he goes.

In 1863, when Americans warships approach Japan, a enigmatic ronin becomes a important figure in a complex game of power between the Shogunate and the empire.

An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

A collection of four Japanese folk tales with supernatural themes.

A film in four episodes presenting teenage girls chosen as representative of their country and our time, in Italy, France, Japan and Canada. In spite of the stylistic peculiarities of the filmmakers, we find in each of them the same desire not to affirm anything, not to judge, but to quite simply show.

As Japan is preparing to host the Olympics, a gang member wanting to go to America is sought after by the police after helping his friend conduct a robbery.

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to America in a small sailboat. Despite his careful planning many unforeseen events will test his determination.

In a sterile building complex, a woman gains a sense of altruism after encountering a street beggar and his blind orphan, much to her husband's disapproval.

In this Japanese drama, a dry goods merchant's daughter is surprised to discover that she has a twin sister. In rural Japan it was thought that twins bring bad luck, so the sister was abandoned at birth. Later her parents tell her that her sister was kidnapped. The woman doesn't believe this and when she eventually meets her twin, both women are involved in love affairs. The merchant's daughter is seeing an educated fellow. Trouble ensues when she begins suspecting that he may be more interested in her sister.

A montage of scenes that describe how people can be as bad as animals.

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.

Takashi Fujiki stars as a rebel in this drama about life on the Yokohama waterfront by New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda. The rebel works as an errand boy for a shipping company and vents his frustrations by plucking on the guitar. His interpretations of popular trends in music are sometimes right-on, and sometimes not exactly. Bereft of his guitar, the rebel's modes of expression are not as effective in generating interest as the Yokohama docks themselves, a fascinating world in their own right.

A dying businessman intends to will two hundred million yen to his three illegitimate children, but his associates scheme to take advantage of the situation.

When a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity.

Love at Twenty unites five directors from five different countries to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

An improvisational film depicting life in a boys' reform school.

An alienated young man flirts with extremism during a major student protest.

A documentary about the eponymous Puerto Rican boxer

Spending their summer on an exotic beach, two brothers fall for the same beautiful girl, whose charm and looks may hide more than they they bargained for.

A surrealist commercial for bicycles.