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The Eel Shohei Imamura Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, this masterpiece from Shohei Imamura is a bold, frequently offbeat exploration of crime and punishment, guilt and redemption, and the elusive possibility of salvation through love. Koji Yakusho stars as an ex-con, paroled after eight years in prison for killing his adulterous wife. Isolated from those around him, his only bond is with the eel he adopted as a pet while behind bars. A new woman in his life presents a chance for renewal, but the past won't leave the couple alone. "...there is an invisible mastery in The Eel, a technique beyond technique" (Dave Kehr, Film Comment). In Japanese with English subtitles. Japan, 1997, 117 mins. DVD $44.95
Dr. Akagi (Kanzo Sensei) Shohei Imamura Shohei Imamura again demonstrates his masterful, audacious talent in this feature that is bursting with vitality and humor. In the summer of 1945, a local physician becomes obsessed with trying to stem an epidemic in his seaside village, with the help of an eccentric group of collaborators. With the devastation of the atomic bomb looming, Imamura creates an oddly upbeat portrait of the absurdity of daily life. "A sprawling, earthy, eccentric black comedy" (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). Japanese with English subtitles. Japan, 1998, 128 mins. DVD $44.95
Eijanaika Shohei Imamura Called an "historical documentary", Eijanaika is "a sprawling, superb-looking period piece charged with Imamura's characteristically fevered eroticism and underplayed black humor. As spectacle, it's stunning in its dynamism and the last half-hour presents one of the most libidinal depictions of a mass uprising since Eisenstein restaged the storming of the Winter Palace. As in Vengeance Is Mine, Imamura imbues the cruelty with virtuoso ferocity and an appalling, visionary beauty" (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). The DVD is widescreen, with optonal English or Chinese subtitles, and includes critic's commentary, director's biography and filmography, chapter selection. Optional English or Chinese subtitles. Includes critic's commentary, director's biography and filmography, chapter selection. Japanese with English subtitles. Japan, 1981, 151 mins. DVD $54.95
The Pornographers Shohei Imamura An exact translation of this film's title would be "The Pornographer--An Introduction to Anthropology," suggesting, perhaps, Imamura's incomparable wit and perception of the perverse. The bizarre story, almost entirely shot on location, follows an Osaka man who makes pornographic films out of a sense of duty to his fellow man. The scenes of him making films are, according to critic/historian Donald Richie, "some of the funniest sequences ever to appear in a Japanese film." Throughout, the film is a technical tour-de-force, the camera constantly taking the role of the voyeur. The DVD is a letterboxed Criterion Collection edition and includes a new digital transfer and more. In Japanese with English subtitles. Japan, 1966, 128 mins. DVD $44.95
Vengeance Is Mine Shohei Imamura One of the most strikingly original films of the modern cinema, Vengeance Is Mine is an "eclectically horrifying portrait of a psychopathic criminal named Iwao Enokizu...[the film] makes every other film on the In Cold Blood theme look like child's play," wrote Tom Allen in The Village Voice. Enokizu (Ken Ogata) becomes a suspect in the murder of two men who work for the government tobacco monopoly. A nationwide dragnet is set up to capture him, but for 78 days he travels throughout Japan committing fraud, cheating women and taking numerous lives. Japanese with English subtitles. Japan, 1979, 144 mins. DVD $44.95
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge Shohei Imamura Directed by Japanese auteur Shohei Imamura (The Ballad of Narayama, The Eel), this charmingly bizarre slice of magic realism is an engaging variation on the male mid-life crisis movie. Unemployed, middle-aged Yosuke (Koji Yakusho) travels to a small town where he encounters the senile fortune-teller Mitzu (Mitsuko Baisho) and her beautiful grand daughter Saeko (Misa Shimizu). Mitzu is a young woman whose body secretes gallons of water when she makes love, a discharge that irrigates her garden and replenishes the local river. She and Yosuke begin a passionate affair. Rumors abound, however as to the fate of her last lover, who drowned under mysterious circumstances. "An endearing portrait of provincial eccentricity, and a generous tribute to female fecundity" (DVD Asian.com). In Japanese with English subtitles. Japan/France, 2001, 119 mins. DVD $44.95