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Feature Films
A Man with Style
あぜ道のダンディ
Director: Yuya Ishii
Family / 110min. / 2011
Junichi Miyata (Ken Mitsuishi) is a 50-year-old truckdriver. His life hasn’t been the same since he lost his wife to cancer 10 years ago. One day, he develops stomach pains and begins to suspect he might be dying from the same disease that took his wife. Believing he doesn’t have much time left, he attempts to reconnect with his kids with the help of his friend, Sawada (Tomoro Taguchi). read more
Cannonball Wedlock
婚前特急
Director: Koji Maeda
Romantic Comedy / 107min. / 2011
Chie (Yuriko Yoshitaka) manages to juggle her mid-twenties work and love life effortlessly: she’s dating 5 fellows at once. When her best friend decides to tie the knot, however, Chie has second thoughts about her polygamous pursuits and decides to hitch herself to the last remaining boyfriend once she’s eliminated all the others, one by one, from her list. read more
Door to the Sea
Competition Film
海への扉
Director: Reiko Ohashi
70min. / 2010
Ken supports himself delivering newspapers. He has an interest in archaeology, having even passed an entry exam to a university program, though he does not make enough money to pay for tuition fees. He begins to sit in on the lectures of a professor, and is noticed by Haru, a university student who confronts him after seeing him steal a prehistoric bone from the archaeology department. The two become romantically involved and live together in Ken’s apartment. But their playful relationship begins to unravel when Ken’s estranged mother returns to extract money from her son. Meanwhile, Haru’s professor, who helps Ken gain a foothold in the archaeology program and offers to let him assist on excavations, becomes attracted to Haru after noticing that she resembles his deceased wife, leading Ken to become jealous and increasingly violent. read more
Food and the Maiden
Competition Film
飯と乙女
Director: Miroru Kurimura
75min. / 2011
Director Minoru Kurimura’s debut feature consists of three unrelated but thematically-connected stories revolving around the seductive powers of food. In one story, Saori, a cook at a small pub, desperately wants one of her customers, Kujo, to eat the food she makes to order, but Kujo refuses to eat anything in front of other people. In another story, Mie, a bulimic woman who lives with her boyfriend, becomes pregnant. She asks her boyfriend if he wants to keep the baby, but when he disappears, she tells her friends she ate him. In the third story, businessman Konaka is struggling to run his company, concerned that he won’t be able to put food on the table for his fleshy wife and growing daughter. read more
HARA-KIRI: Death of a Samurai (in 3D)
一命 / Closing Screening
Director: Takashi Miike
Samurai, Drama / 126min. / 2011
In the Edo era, penniless ronin have increasingly begun to approach nobles in order to ask for permission to commit ritual suicide (Hara-kiri) on their estates, hoping the resident feudal lords will pay them off to go elsewhere. Hanshiro (Ebizo Ichikawa) is one such masterless samurai who visits the House of Ii, run by the heartless Kageyu (Koji Yakusho, the hero of Thirteen Assassins). Kageyu tries to dissuade Hanshiro by recounting the fate of another samurai, Motome (Eita) who had been recently granted the same wish. read more
Hard Romanticker
ハードロマンチッカー
Director: Su-yeon Gu
Gangster / 108min. / 2011
Gu (Shota Matsuda) is a zainichi Korean living in the southern port town of Shimonoseki. He’s a high-school dropout and delinquent, working odd jobs while getting into brawls and beatdowns in the streets and docks. Word gets around that Gu’s high-school juniors Tatsu and Masaru tried to ransack the house of rival Kim Chong-jin, but botched the job since Kim wasn’t home. They end up beating Kim’s grandmother to death and setting his house on fire. read more
Helldriver
ヘルドライバー / Midnight Screening
Director: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Horror / 116min. / 2010
The Eiga Fest is proud to show an extended, rarely-seen exclusive cut of the latest zombie epic from Yoshihiro Nishimura, the manic mind behind Tokyo Gore Police. An alien-spawned, mysterious mist blankets the northern half of Japan, transforming those inhale it into ravenous, flesh-eating zombies hell-bent on devouring the surviving human population. Plunged into chaos, Japan is torn in two – the southern half of the country, where the populace remains untouched by the deadly gas and lives behind a heavily-fortified wall, while the northern half is a lawless, zombie-infected wasteland. Political forces are locked in a stalemate over whether the living dead should remain protected as family members or exterminated like a plague. read more
Milocrorze: A Love Story
ミロクローゼ / Premiere Screening
Director: Yoshimasa Ishibashi
Fantasy / 90min. / 2011
No Japanese movie this year can kick off LA’s first Eiga Fest in Hollywood style better than our opening night film from visionary writer-director Yoshimasa Ishibashi (Vermillion Pleasure Nights), one of the most kinetic and visually innovative Japanese talents of the last several years. Less a meditation than a psychedelic romp on love, Milocrorze is a story containing three tales of romance: read more
Remembrance of Tohoku Earthquake – Our Gratitude for Bonds of Friendship of the World (No Charge)
東日本大震災の記憶 – 世界の絆へ感謝
Director: Hiroshi Nagashima
Documentary / 53min. / 2011
This documentary on the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake is jointly commissioned by the Japan Foundation, the Meteorological Research Institute, and the Asia-Pacific Tourism Exchange Center. While the earthquake and its aftermath are fresh in our minds, this film seeks to show significant efforts made in the following months at relief and reconstruction. Specifically, it is a token of appreciation to the many volunteers and charities who donated their time, money, and compassion to help Japanese families and communities recover from this unbearable tragedy.
Director Nagashima gets up close to many of those working in Sendai and surrounding areas for revealing interviews with both volunteers and residents of these devastated towns and villages. Though the reconstruction of the Tohoku area has not received much media attention in the Western press, this documentary provides a sober reminder of what was suddenly – and for many irretrievably – lost but, with the efforts of tireless workers, will hopefully be recovered.
Someday
大鹿村騒動記
Director: Junji Sakamoto
Drama, Comedy / 93min. / 2011
Zen Kazamatsuri runs the “Deer Eater” restaurant in a rural mountain village in Nagano prefecture. He’s also the lead actor in a kabuki play held by the little town, a tradition dating back over 300 years and protected by multiple generations of the town’s inhabitants. A wrench is thrown into Zen’s life when, shortly before the opening of the play, his estranged wife who had run out on him decades ago returns…half-senile and not remembering having left him at all. read more
The Volunteer, for Real?
Competition Film
マジでガチなボランティア
Director: Tsuyoshi Satoda
95min. / 2010
When Hiroaki Ishimatsu begins to wonder if there’s more to his privileged life than sleeping in class, hitting on girls, and partying, he decides to start a volunteer club called GRAPHIS, a non-profit student group which raises the funds to build a school in Cambodia for impoverished kids. Upon observing the conditions of Cambodian healthcare, Ishimatsu, a medical student and budding doctor, decides that he also wants to build a clinic for rural Cambodian residents, an undertaking with considerably more obstacles and costs. read more
Underwater Love
おんなの河童
Director: Shinji Imaoka
Pink, Musical / 86min. / 2011
The world’s first "pink musical" – a combination of musical and pinku eiga (Pink films, a low-budget softcore porn genre of Japanese cinema). Bored thirtysomething Asuka (Sawa Masaki) works in a factory in a rural town and is engaged to her cloying boss, Taki. Her life takes a turn for the dramatic when she runs into a kappa, a mythical green Japanese creature with a horned beak, tortoise shell back, and bald pate. read more
