By Jan Philippe V. Carpio

In “Nanami” The Inferno of First Love”, Hani shows an artistic devotion to exploring and communicating the experiences of “small” moments and “insides”. Hani also shows that like his protagonists Shun and Nanami, he himself is very much willing to pay the high price for constant curiosity and closing the distance between life and those who struggle to live it.

by Vassilis Economou

Yoshishige Yoshida was one of the most important figures of the “Japanese New Wave” (Nuberu Bagu). He is lesser known than his colleagues Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda but he played a major role in the creation of the New Wave at the Shochiki studios in early 60s. In 1969 he directed his masterpiece Erosu purasu Gyakusatsu (Eros Plus Massacre), a historical drama that is set in the 20s. This is the first part of a trilogy that is composed by historical political films.

By Vassilis Economou

Nagisa Oshima remains one of the best-known representatives of the Japanese New Wave (Nuberu Bagu). During the 60’s he was particularly active cinematically and he expressed his political beliefs through his films. The radical changes that occurred at the Japanese society during the same period could not leave him untouched.

By Lauren Bliss

Masao Adachi’s A Gushing Prayer (1971) figures the possibility for lived contradiction. The film was produced in the wake of the American occupation of Japan and its forced assimilation of Japanese society to Western values, yet it offers a cross-examination of the struggle against the occupation. This structuring is typical of Adachi’s work and thus, despite the historical specificities of this film, A Gushing Prayer is a prayer for us all. It asks: how is it possible to escape the perceived totality of history and of capitalism?

By John A. Riley

This film documents the complex relationship between Kazuo Hara and his ex-wife Takeda Miyuki. He and his current partner (the sound recorder and producer of the documentary) follow Miyuki as she flouts the conventions of Japanese society with a mercurial zeal; a lesbian affair, conceiving a child with an African-American GI, setting up a refuge for women and challenging local gangsters, resulting in her being assaulted.

by John A. Riley

At almost exactly the same time that Sean Connery’s crass, bloated 007 was undergoing plastic surgery to look more Japanese, Seijun Sujuki’s Branded to Kill debuted on Japanese screens, featuring Goro Hanada, an assassin whose licence to kill was entirely of his own making and who seemed determined to prove Fritz Lang right and Ian Fleming wrong.

By Lorena Cancela

In Greek civilisation, the citizen had to take care of body as well as mind (1). According to Plato, Socrates says in Laws: “Those who worship the gods through dance are also the best in combat.” I will not dwell on Greek culture (Western people know a little about it; at least in my country, Argentina, there are manuals that explain the Ancient Greek origins of Western History), but I will take this idea of “harmony” (2) from the Greeks, the unit of body and mind, to see if and how it works in films and in certain contemporary trends.

By Adrian Martin

The chaos of Passions, knowingly or not, evokes Federico Fellini. But Fellini without a centre: without ‘the crisis of the artist’ or ‘the loss of time, history and memory’ or ‘the world as it changes from one era to another’. All enthusiasms in Muratova are small, minute, obsessive, even microscopic. They spin their web wonderfully, but don’t take up so much space. This is why she uses the hinge-overlap method: it’s a lapidary style, the webs join up and combine, extending in every direction. Every which way and loose. Manny Farber used to scoff slyly at people who claimed to know what a film is about.

By Claudia Siefen

In 1926-28, together with Paul Engelmann (architect, 1891-1965), Ludwig Wittgenstein designed and built a now world-famous residence for his sister Margaret Wittgenstein Stonborough (1882-1958), located in the 3rd District of Vienna. Today it houses the Bulgarian Cultural Institute. Of the usual Monday dinner hosted by Moritz Schlick (physicist, 1882-1932) during that period and the related inspirational talks, renowned as “The Vienna Circle”, there is probably no record…

By John A. Riley

Frank Zappa, author of more than fifty albums ranging from raucous rock to jazz and classical. Satirist and outspoken political commentator who loathed the encroachment of the moral majority onto civic life and their subsequent interference with constitutional right to free speech. Enemy of hypocrisy and self-importance. Enthusiast of quotidian vulgarity and champion of the dense, maximalist aesthetic of composers Pierre Boulez and Edgard Varese. Forward looking futurist who envisaged a world of electronic music and internet downloads. Chauvinist, conservative and tight-fisted small businessman. Filmmaker?