Yoshishige Yoshida

In 1847, British writer Emily Brontë (1818-48), perhaps the most enigmatic of the three Brontë sisters, published her novel Wuthering Heights, a dark romance set in the desolation of the moors, a unique work of early Victorian literature that stunned contemporary critics.

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An overview of the life and work of legendary Japanese filmmaker Kijû Yoshida, a notable figure of the Japanese New Wave.

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A documentary about Yoshishige (Kijû) Yoshida's creative process for his most significant film, the 1969 avantgarde tour-de-force Eros + Massacre (1969).

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A documentary about cinematographer Gabriel Veyre's adventures introducing cinema to Japan and South America. Veyre was a traveling cameraman for the Lumiere Co. He declared cinema dead only 2 years after its inception after he saw a villager jerk a woman's head to face the camera when he was filming a small group of them.

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Yoshida grew close to Ozu Yasujiro during his time at Shochiku, where he was able to observe the legendary master at work. Although Yoshida and his generation outspokenly rejected the values of Ozu, Kurosawa and the older humanist filmmakers, over the years Yoshida found himself increasingly drawn back to Ozu’s films, fascinated by their unique rigor, formal language and delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. For Japanese television, Yoshida adapted his own text into a four part documentary, which he also condensed into the one hour version.

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Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

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Documentary series about art. Yoshida's camera documents the history of painting and artistic expression with delicate intimacy.

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Three women who share memories of the Hiroshima disaster try to uncover the hidden family ties that may or may not bind them together.

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A documentary about cinematographer Gabriel Veyre's adventures introducing cinema to Japan and South America. Veyre was a traveling cameraman for the Lumiere Co. He declared cinema dead only 2 years after its inception after he saw a villager jerk a woman's head to face the camera when he was filming a small group of them.

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Yoshida grew close to Ozu Yasujiro during his time at Shochiku, where he was able to observe the legendary master at work. Although Yoshida and his generation outspokenly rejected the values of Ozu, Kurosawa and the older humanist filmmakers, over the years Yoshida found himself increasingly drawn back to Ozu’s films, fascinated by their unique rigor, formal language and delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. For Japanese television, Yoshida adapted his own text into a four part documentary, which he also condensed into the one hour version.

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Young orphan Onimaru is adopted by the wealthy Yamabe family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Kinu. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Kinu, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Mitsuhiko, a man of means who befits her stature. Onimaru vows to win her back.

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An old woman has died and her widower with dementia confesses to killing her. After this, the story goes back in time to show the events leading up to her death.

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Documentary series about art. Yoshida's camera documents the history of painting and artistic expression with delicate intimacy.

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A freestyle biopic of Ikki Kita, the ultranationalist intellectual whose ideas inspired the failed military coup in 1936.

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In this intricately layered Japanese film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.

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Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.

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Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.

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A spontaneous romance blooms between Kawamura, a professor touring Europe, and Naoko, a married woman living in Paris, scarred by the Nagasaki atomic bombings. The two protagonists travel around Europe trying to find themselves.

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In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.

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Shingo and Ritsuko have a baby: Takashi. They happen to be a happy couple, but soon Ritsuko wants to know who is the true father of Takashi, born by artificial insemination.

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As a young woman, Oriko condemned her widowed mother for openly pursuing relationships with younger men. After her mother passes away, she finds herself in an unhappy, loveless marriage and begins to understand her mother’s actions.

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A married woman lets her lover take naked pictures of her. The photos end up in possession of a man who starts blackmailing the couple.

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Struggling with his true emotions, dreams, memories of the past and the reality Shizuo is about to marry, but is torn between his wife-to-be and the love to his mother.

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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.

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Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.

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Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.

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An opportunistic department store clerk gets involved with three women and attempts to manipulate them so he can move up the social ladder.

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An employee in an assurance company threatens to commit suicide when management announces a massive layoff, the company uses this threat to its own advantage by turning the incident into an advertising campaign. With the success of the campaign, however, he is no longer a desperate man pointing a gun to his head, but a potential leader who wishes to take advantage of his failed suicide.

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Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father. The woman senses good in him and tries to lead him on the right path.

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