Actor: Sumiko Sakamoto

The Ballad of Narayama

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

The Pornographers

Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend’s obsession. Imamura’s comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.

Sometimes... Like a Prostitute

A man with a medical condition and a guilty past becomes obsessed with a simple minded girl he finds in a park. His wife is not thrilled when he brings her home.

The Buried Forest

Three high school girls living out in the country build stories out from their local environment, mountainous and bordered by an unkempt buried forest.

My Father's Dragon

Elmer is told by a traveling cat about a baby dragon who is being held captive and mistreated on the scary Wild Island. Elmer decides to investigate and battles tigers, crocodiles and gorillas in order to rescue the little dragon.

The Stairway to the Distant Past

Broke, with his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Mike Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama's past, returns to town, the fuse is lit on a criminal powder keg set to blow the lid off the Yokohama underworld.