Masaki Tamura

Haru works at a part-time job for a bookstore. Her dream is to become an illustrator and she also loves cats. One day, after a cat named Chibutomu disappears from the bookstore Haru canvasses the neighbourhood in search of Chibutomu.

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A salaryman debates selling his grandfather's land to pay off his father's debt.

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"Shadow of Sand" - Set in Tokyo in the 1980's. Yukie, a young woman lives with the vision of the lover she has murdered. After his death he continues to appear in her room. Yukie maintains her usual life, trying to avoid discovery of her crime until a new lover turns up.

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Abandoned by his mother, Kenji scrapes out a meager existence doing odd jobs, including driving bar hostesses and their customers home. Besides this, he cares for the sister of an incarcerated friend and a young illegal immigrant. Eventually, his life reaches a turning point.

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Kaoru, a wealthy woman whose youth is fading, abandons the hustle and bustle of the city to live peacefully in a home on the coast. There, she takes care of an old deaf, dumb and blind man as if he were an insect, a child or a pet. He can’t do anything for himself, so she feeds him and accompanies him on his walks. This strong mutual dependency offers Kaoru an escape from society and allows her to free herself from restrictions imposed by common sense.

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A.D. 2015: A virus spreads in many cities globally, a suicidal disease infected by pictures. Once infected, the diseased will soon meet death. They have no way of fighting back, filled with fear and despair. The media calls it the 'Lemming Syndrome'.

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Three couples stay at a lakeside cottage with their children. They want them to prepare intensely for a prestigious high school entrance exam with the help of a private tutor. One night, one of the wives confesses to her husband that she has killed his mistress.

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A private detective takes on an assignment to return a girl, who is set to marry into a prestigious family, from a mysterious commune in the forest.

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In the final days of World War II, a 15-year-old boy grappling with survivor's guilt watches a rural Japanese community quietly fracture under the heavy emotional tolls of war.

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Four short films produced without a director

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The ostensible subject of this film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village’s persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. The film’s larger subject, however, is the disappearance of Japan’s traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.

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Kenji Nakagami, one of the most notable Japanese writers of the post-war, died in 1992. His work reveals a strong connection to his homeland, Kishu: a mountainous region that connects to the Pacific Ocean through a river. "To The Alley" (alternative title) is a documentary about Kenji's life. Incorporating 16 mm images from the writer's personal archive and adding new footage, director Shinji Aoyama travels through the paths of the life and art of the Japanese writer.

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A successful businessman and his alcoholic wife attempt to piece together their unhappy lives and shattered marriage. Little do Nagai and Akira know that their precarious relationship will soon be transformed by a stranger, the enigmatic Keechie.

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In 1983, photographer Gocho Shigeo met an early death at the young age of 36. The view we see reflected in Gocho’s photographic images has become more profound over time since his death and has struck a chord in people’s hearts. While focusing on Gocho’s collection of photographs Self and Others, the film also visits places associated with him, creating a collage with the manuscripts, letters, photographs and voice recordings remaining in an attempt to capture “one more gesture”—a theme pursued by Gocho through photographic expression. This film is neither a critical biography nor a monograph on the photographer. Rather, we are offered a new perception. As if mesmerized, the photographs Gocho left behind captivate us in their gaze.

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In rural Japan, the survivors of a tragedy converge and attempt to overcome their damaged selves, all while a serial killer is on the loose.

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A bright, attractive, and driven young woman is intent on marrying her tall, handsome, and dreamy boyfriend. However, he abruptly dumps her.

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Japanese drama set in a southern Kyushu island where dance-troupe leader Shinji (Shinji Arano) stays on as his touring troupe departs. After Shinji moves in with an old man (Nobuyoshi Tanigawa) cared for by his granddaughter (Reiko Matsuo), he becomes an apprentice to the old man's construction of a wooden boat

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After killing the man he believes murdered his daughter, a white-collar worker returns to his mundane life, until he's approached by a man offering a mysterious job opportunity.

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With the help of a mysterious acquaintance, a former low-level yakuza tracks down and kidnaps the man he believes kidnapped and murdered his daughter, but others are soon implicated in the death.

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Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the family.

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The slow collapse of the relationship between an out-of-work actor and his girlfriend.

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Believing his boss double-crossed him, recently released gangster Yasuo is on his way to find the betrayer, but before setting out, he asks Kenji to care for his mentally challenged sister and a mysterious black bag.

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Three brothers, their father missing and tensions boiling, gather at their rural summer house; soon enough, they're unexpectedly joined by a female cousin.

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Resulting pic blurs the line between documentary and fiction as Yanagimachi explores the lives of a couple of groups of peddlers, and they appear to act out their personal dramas for the camera.

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A samurai outlaw on the run with his motley clan falls for the bounty hunter who's trailing him to the untold riches of a mythical city of gold.

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A magical realist story of the legendary Okinawan hero Untamagiru participating in efforts to form an independent Okinawa before the island was returned to Japan in 1972.

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A talk show hostess takes a camera crew out to an abandoned factory to investigate a purported snuff film that was made there. As she gets closer to the truth, she and her friends are subjected to a brutal nightmare.

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TV film directed by Toshiharu Ikeda and written by Takashi Ishii. Produced in 1986 but not aired until 1988.

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The movie compiles footage taken by Ogawa Production for a period of more than ten years after the collective moved to Magino village. Unique to this film are fictional reenactments of the history of the village in the sections titled "The Tale of Horikiri Goddess" and "The Origins of Itsutsudomoe Shrine". Ogawa combines all the techniques that were developed in his previous films to simultaneously express multiple layers of time—the temporality of rice growing and of human life, personal life histories, the history of the village, the time of the Gods, and new time created through theatrical reenactment—bring them into a unified whole. The faces of the Magino villagers appear in numerous roles transcending time and space—sometimes as individuals, sometimes as people who carry the history of the village in their memories, sometimes as storytellers reciting myths, and even as members of the crowd in the fictional sequences.

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Chief Detective KIMURA Denbei, fondly referred to as Smoky Denbei, is a legendary figure at the Metropolitan Police Department. Transferred to Denbei's Criminal Investigation Division 1, Detective KUMADA Tomekichi arrives from the Toyama Prefectural Police. KUMADA is disconcerted by Denbei's position that murderers nowadays do not need a plausible motive, but gradually adapts to Denbei's unusual methods of investigation.

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TV movie adapation of "Three Sisters Detective Agency" mystery novels.

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In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.

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

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