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- Documentary about red-beret-ed Jimmy Mirikitani, a feisty painter working and living on the street, near the World Trade Center, when 9/11 devastates the neighborhood. A nearby film editor, Linda Hattendorf, persuades elderly Jimmy to move in with her, while seeking a permanent home for him. The young woman delves into the California-born, Japan-raised artist's unique life which developed his resilient personality, and fuels his 2 main subjects: cats and internment camps. The editor films Jimmy's remarkable journey back into his incredible past.
- NINJA is unearthing the true history, unique military skills and ancient traditions behind the infamous Ninja. The drama documentary tells the intriguing story of Ninja Tanba who was trained by his grandfather to become one of the most feared warriors in ancient Japan. Also featuring one of the last (if not only) surviving Ninja masters.
- Even now, 150 years since the country opened itself up to the world in 1868, there is something uniquely special and particular about Japan, something which seems to survive its hectic pace, hyper-modern technology and mega-metropolis of Tokyo, all hallmarks of the age of globalization. Director Bianca Charamsa made her way to Japan during this year's cherry blossom season to get to grips with the country's character through conversations with some of its artists. Among those she met were the actress Kaori Momoi, superstar architect Tadao Ando, Cannes award-winning director Naomi Kawase, and other cultural figures such as the artist Takahiro Iwasaki, writer Keiichiro Hirano and two guardians of traditional culture: a Soto Yen priest and a tea master. Although two violent atomic catastrophes - the bombing of Hiroshima and the Fukushima nuclear disaster - have shaken and shaped modern-day Japan, the artist Takahiro Iwasaki believes that memory of 6th and 9th August 1945 is slowly fading, despite all the folded cranes left by visitors to the memorial sites. Natural catastrophes like sea- and earthquakes also rock Japan time and time again; perhaps this explains why the Japanese aesthetic Wabi Sabi incorporates both beauty and decay...much like the beauty of the cherry blossom as it withers during the annual festival of Hanami.
- In Echigo in Japan the snow often lies several feet deep well into May covering landscape and villages. Over the centuries the inhabitants have organized their lives accordingly. In order to record their very distinctive forms of everyday life, their festivals and religious rituals Ulrike Ottinger journeyed to the mythical snow country - accompanied by two Kabuki performers. Taking the parts of the students Takeo and Mako they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki who in the mid-19th century wrote his remarkable book "Snow Country Tales". A beautiful vixen fox leads the two protagonists astray and they undergo a wondrous metamorphosis. As a man and woman of the Edo period they now travel through the past and again and again encounter the present: Temple children build the holy mountain Fuji-san out of snow; a woman weaver, producing flimsy crepe in the icy cold, is haunted by an evil mountain demon; at the festival of the gods of paths and roads the rice straw pyramid with New Years' poems and wishes is burned and the popular ritual of bridegroom throwing takes place. The son of the transformed couple becomes a famous actor. Yet the jealous Emperor banishes him to the gold and silver island of Sado, to whose thousand-year history of exile we owe the saddest and at the same time most beautiful Japanese poems. From the island his longing gaze roams over the ocean. These three elements: Kabuki, poetry and the reality of the Snow Country combine with the music of Yumiko Tanaka to make a visually striking and moving film.
- Wings of Defeat is a feature-length documentary exploring the human experience of surviving kamikaze pilots. When director, Risa Morimoto, learned that her beloved uncle had trained as a kamikaze pilot in his youth but carried that secret to his grave, she decided to retrace his footsteps and ask surviving pilots about their provocative experiences. Sixty years later, survivors in their eighties tell us about their training, their mindsets, their experiences in a kamikaze cockpit and what it meant to survive when thousands of their fellow pilots crashed to their deaths. Their stories insist we set aside our preconceptions to relive their all too human experiences with them. Ultimately, they help us question what responsibilities a government at war has to its soldiers and to its people.
- Theatre 1 (Observational Film Series #3) is a feature length documentary, which closely depicts the world of Oriza Hirata, Japan's leading playwright and director, and his theatrical company, Seinendan. By depicting them, the film leads the audience to revisit fundamental but timely questions: What is theatre? Why do human beings act?
- Once upon a time, you were born. In the Philippines, there was no science education when you were a child. When they began to offer it in your adulthood, you leapt at the chance and studied harder than everyone else. You learned of kingdoms and species and genes and atoms. Science helped you to see the bigger world beyond. You studied so well, an American university paid you to keep studying with them, so you left. You gained mastery over the evolution of birds there, but you missed home the whole time. You lost your first wife and son to Science. So with degree in hand, you went back to your people. You found that they had burned their forests, and had exploded their seas. So you gave a new bird to your people; because, now you knew how to use it to save them. This was the piding. And the rest is the story of Oliver Carlos.
- Oriza Hirata is Japan's leading playwright and director, who runs his own theatrical company, Seinendan. Theatre 2 (Observational Film Series #4) examines the dynamic relationship between theatre and the society through depicting Hirata's activities. In order for his art and his not-so-commercial company to survive this highly capitalistic modern society, what kind of strategy does Hirata have and practice?
- Shiniuma - Dead Horse - Brillante Ma Mendoza: The story begins at Banei racetrack in Obihiro, Hokkaido, in the midst of winter. Marcial (Manny) has won a race and is happily on his way home when immigration officers come to the ranch where he works as a stablehand. Manny is arrested for being in the country illegally and is deported. From Manila airport he takes a long-distance bus, jeepney, and bike taxi, and finally gets to his home village, but his family dispersed long ago and there is no place for him to stay. He sneaks into the Santa Ana racetrack in the end but.
