Shogen
A bittersweet, hilarious, enlightening and inspirational road trip through Japanese arthouse cinemas with a heartily independent filmmaker, who also struggles to release his own movies in real life.
Progressing from sound to color, Lighting Over the Beyond is a road movie that traces the roots of cinema and the history of war while asking "What is war?" and "What is an enemy?".
An unadorned perspective on impoverished life in Okinawa, an island in southern Japan whose modern history was tainted by the bloody battle for the Pacific. 17-year-old Aoi works as a nightclub hostess in order to earn rent money and to provide for her little boy. She also supports her lazy husband Masaya, who has no qualms about giving her a few slaps, particularly after he loses his job. What chance does this young family have to scrape their way out of the social mire, where they were driven by poverty and the imprudence of youth? How dark does reality have to get before it stifles the rays of hope that filter through? An intimate story that presents a less glitzy picture of Japan than is customary, demonstrating that social inequality impacts all corners of the globe.
Set in a spa town, Akira Takasu (Masatoshi Nagase) is a carver and a mailman. He keeps in touch with poet Penguin (Masataka Kubota). Penguin has a female fan with the name of Moonlit Night's Star (Sakurako Konishi). She sends letters to Penguin. One day, the female fan appears in front of Akira Takasu and Penguin. These three somehow get involved in a battle between the yakuza.
A three-way battle of hoodlums vs yakuza vs gyoza factory manager! A fierce battleground in Osaka, where territories are fought over with impunity. There, a group of hoodlums, who are in good shape and gaining momentum, have launched a series of surprise attacks on the Yakuza.
General store manager Akio (Tetsuji Tamayama) lives a carefree live in Okinawa with his dog, Kafu. One day he receives a strange letter from a woman named Sachi, but that’s not any person he’s familiar with. It turns out that the letter was a response to a joke wish he hung up at a Shinto shrine months earlier. Then one day, Sachi (Maiko) shows up and the two begin a relationship.
Misaki visits her boyfriend Koichi in Okinawa, the southern island of Japan. To welcome the arrival of Misaki, Koichi's friend Jinsei holds a welcoming party at his house. At the party, Misaki learns from the wise granny about the legend behind the bag hanging from the fig tree and the local demon: Kijimuna, which deeply fascinate Misaki. Jinsei then introduces Misaki to a young female writer, Kagemi, who tells Misaki the darker side of the Kijimuna legend. As the local shaman and medium to the other world, Kagemi’s knowledge in local lore gives Misaki much more to wonder about. The quiet life in Okinawa takes a sharp turn with the arrival of Jinsei’s ex-wife Sanae, which leads to a tragic accident. Soon, the parties involved begin to see a vengeful spirit and their peaceful lifes turn into a nightmare.
The film is based on a true story about an Okinawan sansen (3 stringed guitar) player named Ryo and his experiences growing up in Okinawa in 1968. Ryo meets an American military solider named George, and they discover that they have more similarities than differences. The atmosphere of the film is heavily charged with discrimination and prejudice- Okinawans and Japanese (yes there is a difference-big difference in fact), US military and Japanese/Okinawans, officers and enlisted soldiers- and takes place with echoes of the civil rights movement lingering in the backdrop.
Several hundred years after the Battle of Dannoura, the Genji and Heike clans face off again in a poor mountain town with a buried treasure legend. A revolver-wielding stranger, a lone gunman, burdened with emotional scars and blessed with incredible skill, drifts into town and crosses paths with two warring clans who are both on the hunt for a hidden treasure in a remote western town. Knowing his services are valuable to either side, he offers himself to the clan who will offer up the largest share of the wealth. Yoshitsune commands his Genji gang in white while Kiyomori leads his Heike gang in red. Expectations collide as the key players wonder which gang the gunman will join. Dirty tricks, betrayal, desire and finally, love, get jumbled together, as the situation erupts into a showdown.
