Filmmakers’ Market
産地直送 The Filmmakers’ Market Is Now Open!
The Filmmakers’ Market is a new marketplace for documentaries that tears down the walls separating Japanese filmmakers and foreign viewers and allows filmmakers to bring their English-subtitled works in for direct sale, kind of like a farmer’s fresh produce market. We plan to feature not only Japanese but also other Asian documentaries. All of the DVDs are packaged by the directors and producers themselves, so some may have only Japanese on the package or in the booklet (we note as such below), but and all of them have English subtitles.
US $
Total running time: Approx. 111 min.. / color
作兵衛さんと日本を掘る *Educational streaming licenses are available at Alexander Street. Sakubei Yamamoto (1892–1984) was a lifelong miner in the Chikuho coalfield in southern Japan. In his mid-60s, he began to paint a documentary record of work and daily life in and around the coal mines. In May 2011, 697 paintings and journals by this little-known miner […]
US $
Total running time: Approx. 114 min. / color
沖縄スパイ戦史 *This title is available at Vimeo-on-Demand for private home use only. *Educational streaming licenses are available at Alexander Street. The Battle of Okinawa, in which the arrival of US troops at the end of World War II led to the death of more than 200,000 people, including civilians. Behind it lies a hidden history: […]
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Total running time: Approx. . / color
This title is available at Vimeo-on-Demand for private home use only. Educational streaming licenses are available at Alexander Street Synopsis: In Henoko, the construction of the U.S. Marine Corps base continues despite the objections of 80% of Okinawans. In Takae, the Government deployed over 1,000 riot police officers to facilitate the construction of MV-22 Osprey […]
US $
Total running time: Approx. 119 minutes. / color
Little Voices from Fukushima is a documentary film dedicated to Japanese mothers and children living in the post-meltdown world of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. In the course of telling their stories, Director Hitomi Kamanka takes us to Belarus, where we learn from mothers who experienced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster twenty eight years ago.
US $30.00
Total running time: Approx. 105 minutes. / color
Iwaishima Island, part of Kaminoseki City in Yamaguchi Prefecture. On this island in the Seto Inland Sea, the 500 residents have been living by helping each other and sharing things, since that was what was necessary to live in such a harsh natural environment.
US $30.00
Total running time: Approx. 130 minutes. / color
A hundred thousand non-combatants—one in four Okinawans—died in the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II. Postwar, the U.S. military forcibly constructed military bases throughout Okinawa. Even today, 43 years since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan and 70 years since the war, 74% of all U.S. military facilities in Japan are crowded onto the Okinawan islands.
US $
Total running time: Approx. 108 minutes.. / color
In Kaizuka City, Osaka, the family-run Kitaide butcher shop makes its living by raising and slaughtering cattle, selling the meat. From the moment of tension when the hammer drops on the forehead of the cow, cattle are transformed into meat through practiced movements. This labor, traditionally the work of the Burakumin, the outcastes of feudal Japan, is passed down to the next generation by parents, who hope their children will not encounter discrimination as they have. People live by eating the lives of others. This is a record of a family who looks into the nature of life, every single day.
US $35.00
Total running time: Approx. 74 minutes. / color
No one could have ever imagined the absurd fate awaiting Mirror’s Quest and the other horses of Fukushima: almost dying in the tsunami; exposed to radiation inside the 20 km exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear meltdown; left for weeks without fodder; shut away in stables for months because of government red tape.
US $35.00
Total running time: Approx. 109 minutes. / color
The Enei district of Minami Soma town lies within the 20 km exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In early April 2011, immediately after the devastating tsunami and nuclear meltdown forced people to evacuate the area, filmmaker Yoju Matsubayashi rushed here with relief goods. From a chance meeting with city councilor Kyoko Tanaka, he began making this film. Living together with the evacuees in school classrooms designated as temporary refuge centers, he captured an extraordinary period in the lives of the local people. Interspersed with humorous episodes and deep emotions, the film delves into memories of a local culture that has been taken away by the tragedy.
US $35.00
Total running time: Approx. 106 minutes. / color
Inspired by the documentaries of the great Shohei Imamura, under whom the filmmaker studied, this film explores the lives of Japanese soldiers who chose not to return to Japan when the war finished, but who stayed behind in Southeast Asia to build new lives for themselves.