Nobuhiko Ōbayashi
Film director Nobuhiko Obayashi went to Russia in 1992 and visited, with his crew, five families from five different cities and asked one member of each family to record their daily life in their homes on video. Using old lullabies as background, the documentary reveals the intimacy, joys, fears and expectations of these families.
The story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan’s feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.
Director Nobuhiko Obayashi is often dubbed "the cinematic magician." 2 and a half years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer with 3 months to live. But that did not deter him from making movies. Currently, he's in post-production on the second film he's done since being diagnosed. He's driven by the message of his late friend, the maestro Akira Kurosawa: "Movies have the power to stop fighting. Look 400 years ahead and keep on shooting." We follow Obayashi's extraordinary career and his mission to use the big screen to send out a message of peace.
Dives deep into the tragicomic world of the"towns-people" stand-ins working at Warp Station Edo, a popular shooting location for samurai dramas, through a piercing study of a 63-yearold extra. Utilizing mockumentary stylings, this ambitious film forms a compelling commentary on the aspirations that shape film production and the feelings that a simple, ho-hum life can evoke.
After meeting as college students in the cinema town of Seijo, husband and wife Nobuhiko and Kyoko Obayashi have gone on to direct and produce acclaimed films together for 60 years.
Spring, 1941. Sixteen-year-old Toshihiko attends school in the coastal town of Karatsu, where his aunt cares for his ailing cousin. Immersed in the seaside’s nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town’s other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war’s gravitational pull.
Relatives gather from afar in wintery Ashibetsu upon the death of patriarch Mitsuo (Shinagawa Toru). A mysterious woman named Nobuko (Tokiwa Takako) suddenly shows up. Her appearance gradually exposes wartime secrets and Mitsuo’s unknown past. Building on his previous film Casting Blossoms to the Sky, Obayashi focuses on the border between life and death and brings to light an untold war story that was hidden within a family.
The main characters are Yume, a girl that dreams of becoming an actress and Mirai, a student who transferred to the school from Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. All the students at the school lend their support to Mirai because all of them have had experienced the 2004 Chūetsu earthquake and understand her predicament. Over time, Mirai starts to make friends with the other students in the school and become emotionally stronger.
In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War 2 and the 2004 Chuetsu Earthquake, and is now notable for the fireworks it launches annually in memory of the victims of war. She is there for two reasons: firstly, to learn about the experiences of Nagaoka's inhabitants, and secondly, to watch a stage play written by an enigmatic student of her ex-boyfriend, which depicts the bombing of the city during WWII.
Retrospective documentary on the making of the Japanese horror movie House (1977).
A successful illustrator, Hinohara Takehiro, lives a happy life with his wife Toshiko, who has supported him all these years since the early struggling days, and their two sons. Feeling unwell, Toshiko has a check up one day and is told, out of the blue, that her days are numbered. When Toshiko is allowed out of the hospital temporarily, Takehiro and Toshiko travel to Hamakaze station. The town has changed a great deal in 18 years, however, the apartment where they started their married life is still there. People and scenery they used to cherish and the invaluable memories come vividly through. Starting at the place where their life as a couple began, the two prepare for "the day" while cherishing their remaining time. During the Bon festival, when the spirits of the deceased are believed to return to the living, Takehiro takes his sons to the firework display at Hamakaze and see the smiling face of Toshiko.
After his parent's divorce, Kazuo Saito moves with his mother from Onomichi and must leave his girlfriend behind. At his new school, Kazuo is surprised to reunite with his childhood friend Kazumi. "Remember I kissed you, saying I'll marry you when we're grown ups?" He feels embarrassed around Kazumi, who talks about their early childhood stories without any reserve. Kazuo is annoyed with Hiroshi's attitude, but with Kazumi, they naturally start to get comfortable with each other again just like old times. Kazumi's family runs a long-standing soba noodle restaurant. One day, Kazumi invites Kazuo to her house. After talking about old times, they walk to a place from their childhood called the "Lonely Watering Place". "Kazuo, the water here is very good. That's why our soba noodles also taste so good." Kazuni tries to scoop up some water with a dipper and the two accidentally fall into the water. They quickly crawl out, but suddenly realize that they have switched bodies!
It is the second work of the Oita trilogy of Obayashi . Following " Nigori Snow ", Ise Masazo draws a song written by composers and songwriter "Farewell of 22 years old " as a motif and draws a story of love that spans two generations of mother and daughter.
Works commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of Japan mapping Supervision Association
Four people are discovered brutally murdered in an up-scale high-rise apartment. All the victims appear to be family, but as the investigation deepens it is discovered that one of the victims isn't related to the family.
Yuichi Kosaka is a salaried businessman in Ueda city. His achievements have not been improved recently, and he is betrayed by the manager of takada. Takada, who is related to the company's executives, is very strict with him. Every night late, Yuichi is often dissatisfied with his wife, Kazue, and his daughter Sanae.On the other day Yuichi ran the car aiming at his home village. However, it is lost in the mountain road which should know well. An old public telephone keeps in sight, and yuichiro stops the car before it. It was Yuichi who had been able to find the name of the old high school classmate, Tai in the old telephone book, and dial, and was surprised to hear the voice of the big. It was because the voice was as it was 30 years ago. The telephone was connected to the past.
It is the 1950’s, and the protagonist, identified only as ‘I,’ has come from Tokyo to study, burdened by the high expectations of his poor family in northeastern Japan. He meets a young woman named Shino who works in a small restaurant in the Komagome area of Tokyo. They fall in love, and he takes her to his family home through the heavy snow for their wedding. He introduces Shino to his elderly parents and his sister; they spend their wedding night together listening to bells ringing on sleighs gliding past across the moonlit snow. The next morning, wrapped in their small world of happiness, they go to a hot spring in the mountains to begin their honeymoon.
Veteran filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi rounds out the second of his two trilogies about his hometown of Onomichi with this film about the budding relationship between a young lad and an eccentric old man. Fifth-grader Yuta (Takuro Atsugi) is a typical city child looking forward to a summer of reading comic books and playing video games. Instead, he is bundled off to his grandparent's house on the Inland Sea. His grandfather, Yuta's parents explain, has been acting strangely as of late -- he eats the offerings in the family altar and once tried to lead attendants at a funeral in a rousing round of calisthenics. Since his mother and father are swamped with work, and his elder sister (Nana Sano) is studying for college entrance exams, Yuta has been asked to look after Grandpa. The old man takes Yuta on a tour of Onomichi, regaling him with 70 years of its history. Along the way, Grandpa slips in and out of the past, increasingly unable to discern between the two.
A heartwarming, based-on-true-story of how a hearing-impaired couple, Masahiro and Namiko, knew each other, got married and began participating in the Triathlon. The story is told in flashbacks as Namiko awaits childbirth.
The second TV movie Obayashi Nobuhiko directed based on Akagawa Jiro's Mikeneko Holmes series.
People from all walks of life (a high-school student, a middle-aged businessman, a yakuza chief, etc.) all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening. At the stroke of midnight, the lost ship emerges from the sea and they are given a brief time to say their final words to their lost loved ones, before the deceased must once again board the ship and it sinks back into the depths.
A middle-aged journalist looking to make her big break. After working the same beat on the "women's page", Yumiko gets promoted to editorials.
Ayase Shinsuke (Hiroshi Katsuno), a popular writer of a series of girl novels, visits Otaru, the town he grew up in. He meets a strange boy who calls himself by the author's real name.
It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara Yasufumi Hayashi) hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town life in Japan in the 60's.
Chizuko and Mika are sisters who get along very well, and have a good relationship, but one day Chizuko dies unexpectedly in an accident. Mika always feels undermined for not living up to her sisters achievements until one day the ghost of her sister appears again. And by the encouragement of Chizuko, she overcomes various difficulties in her life.
This 150-minute documentary, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi (HOUSE) on the set of AKIRA KUROSAWA’S DREAMS, features behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew.
The film is based on true events. It centers around Shunzo, a popular greengrocer who lives in a city near Tokyo. His life, and that of his wife, Michi and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China.
Harada is a successful scenario writer, and his best buddy has just announced an intention to propose to Harada's ex-wife. Recovering from the shock, Harada indulges in melancholy, mainly on his failure as a husband and father, and goes to a 'Rakugo' (sit-down comedy) show, where a friendly man in the audience invites him home. Harada is puzzled at the strong resemblance of this man and his wife to his own parents, who were killed nearly 30 years ago when he was twelve.
An entire Japanese international grade school—and all within—are mysteriously transported to a foreboding desert wasteland. As the story unfolds, the diminishing student body weathers this apocalyptic crisis while searching for clues about their surroundings, and dealing with psychological breakdown and dangerous exterior forces.
After a series of chance meetings, a shiftless motorbike enthusiast, Ko, begins a romance with a carefree girl, Miyo, after teaching her to ride. When Miyo proves herself a biker prodigy, Ko begins to fear that she is destined to crash.
During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her. With surprising moments of caricature and slapstick, Obayashi celebrates the anarchic world of adolescence while also satirizing adult hypocrisy and conformism.
A romantic comedy involving shooting commercials, French food, and island visitors.
A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?
Four sisters with no consanguinity are living together since childhood. When facing misfortune and grievances in lives, they give support and encouragement to each other, even sacrifice oneself to help others...
A high school girl travels to the island of New Caledonia and has magical adventures.
After noticing in the news there was a fire in an old canal town, Eguchi recalls visiting there a decade ago as a university student.
This cartoon, based on a popular manga (Japanese-style comic), centers on an 11-year-old boy who goes to Africa with his father in 1941. Because he is Japanese, the father is detained by the British. The boy joins up with a beautiful native girl, and the adventure begins, a sort of Young Indy Jones meets Tarzan. Written by Rob Richardson
Ken Ota is a Japanese-American GI. He comes to Hiroshima after WW2 looking for his big sister, but finds Keiko, a bomb victim with a keloid scar on her shoulder.
Yoshiyama Kazuko is in the 3rd grade of junior high. One day, she's cleaning in the laboratory, she notices of the smell of lavender, and fainted. Since then, she acquires a mysterious power to travel time.
In 1983, Nobuhiko Ōbayashi invited Takako Irie and her daughter, Wakaba Irie, to Onomichi to make this homage to the bakeneko movies.
9th-graders Kazuo (boy) and Kazumi (girl) take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.
While Ryouko was in Europe studying music, her boyfriend died in a traffic accident. Ryouko believed that she had psychic powers that killed him, and when she returned to Japan she was sent to a mental hospital. While recovering, her brother-in-law, Kouji, decides to look after her, and she goes to his house to act as a governess for Kouji's daughter, Alice.
A college student has an affair with a married, middle-aged teacher.
Mitamura Yuka is a normal, shy high school student… Except for the fact that she has psychic powers. When a new student with similar powers begins to show her skills, creating a force of psychic Nazi student enforcers, Yuka and her friends vow to stop her. But behind it all is a mysterious force that will put Yuka's powers to the ultimate test!
A light-hearted portrayal of three strange days in the life of a high school girl who is told she will die in three days. The best entertainment of student films, which became a legend. Many students aspired to film after seeing this film and many others gave up directing at the time.
A story of the everyday life of a couple living together, ordinary but full of warmth and love. Starring Miura and Yamaguchi's first movie since making public of their romance--their real-life story on the screen.
Obayashi’s take on the famous Kosuke Kindaichi series, made popular partly thanks to the numerous movie-adaptions by Kon Ichikawa, the most known being The Inugami Family. Kosuke Kindaichi is the most famous detective in Japan. Kindaichi gets a new case to figure out who has beheaded a valuable statue and made off with its head.
Kyoko met Tetsu during her trip to San Francisco. Soon they fell in love but getting married was not in his mind. They were to meet again back in Tokyo but Tetsu didn't turn up. She went to look for him in San Francisco but all she found was him with his new girlfriend. Kyoko went back to Tokyo and eventually married a big corporate CEO...
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the country to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.
Komori Tiaki is a budding tennis student, however one day in training her coach hits the ball into her eye accidentally. She is taken to hospital but it advised that she will never regain the sight in her eye. Her coach knows of a mysterious doctor 'Blackjack' who lives in a secluded house, who might be able to help. 'Blackjack' agrees to do the operation, but for a 'substantial reward'! Her sight is regained, but now she starts to see a mysterious man that is invisible to those around her....
When a woman and her bridegroom are found dead in a double suicide the day after their wedding, it is up to the detective (Akira Nakao) to figure out what could possibly have motivated them. Carefully and systematically, he pieces together the inner lives of the two.
A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko made while making a commercial for Hitachi.
A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko of people gathering by a beautiful lake in Canada.
A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko of a collection of photos by Shinoyama Kishin of the Rio Carnival.
Murase is a bodyguard of yakuza group. Ochiai is a police officer who once was a student activist. When they meet, they are surprised how identical they look.
This is a work of Nobuhiko Obayashi when he was around 30 years old. This semi-documentary from the perspective of a young designer visiting Japan from Northern Europe tells the story of the filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi and his friends who the young designer encounters in Japan.
This is a work of Nobuhiko Obayashi when he was around 30 years old. This semi-documentary from the perspective of a young designer visiting Japan from Northern Europe tells the story of the filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi and his friends who the young designer encounters in Japan.
Colorfully edited vignettes of young characters having fun in the town of Onomichi.
A program of five films on love and sex from the Japanese underground of the experimental cinema, assembled by avant-garde cineaste Takahiko Iimura, and shown at the American Cinematheque from January 19 to 25, 1967.
Obayashi 8mm short about a man who reminisces about a girl in his past (played by Obayashi's soon-to-be wife Kyoko)
Making of Nobuhiko Obayashi's TV Program in 1980 called 「いい旅チャレンジ20,000km清水港線・旅の表情』
