Art
Graphic designer.
A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.
In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
The myth of the Sun Goddess who founded Japanese society is seen through the lens of a modern view of history.
A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.
The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokugawa Period, a time in which appearances are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojō 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, Bannojō sneaks into the house and steals their obis and runs through the town proclaiming the two as adulterers.
Famed Japanese jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita expresses his burning passion for music by setting his piano on fire. "I think though it is just a ten minute of performance, it holds an essence of artistic expression because he risked his life and career and took a serious approach to a project which is very ephemeral and unperfectible" (Ken Awazu).
A 16mm film by Kiyoshi Awazu.
Since 1975 Kiyoshi Awazu has been obsessed with the "designer" Antonio Gaudi. Then there was no stopping this man. He went to Barcelona, took his own 16mm camera, made a film, wrote a book called "In Praise of Gaudi" and was the main force behind the subsequent tour of the Gaudi exhibition in Japan. (Ken Awazu).
Follows a young med student's relationships with two women: a dangerous affair with a childhood friend and his mother's struggle to rebuild their estranged relationship.
Two Jesuit priests encounter persecution when they travel to Japan in the 17th century to spread Christianity and search for their mentor.