Dance of Darkness

Dandy(en)

A selection of seemingly unconnected scenes featuring Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld, Nina Hagen and Lene Lovich. Losely based on Voltaire's satire "Candide".

Just Visiting This Planet(en)

Peter Sempel's masterful poetic film tribute to butoh performer Kazuo Ohno.

Rose Color Dance(ja)

A document of Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh dance with Kazuo Ohno as the guest dancer shot in Hijikata's early period when he was emerging as the originator of Butoh. All of the male dancers are dressed up with evening suits and move gracefully, yet an intruder breaks up the whole scene abruptly. The film is worth seeing, even if just to see a memorable gay duet of Hijikata and Ohno. Overexposed, washed out images are sandwiched among normal ones.

Kazuo Ohno: I Dance Into the Light(en)

A documentary about legendary butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno.

The Masseurs(ja)

Anma (The Masseurs) is a representative and historical work by the creator of Butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata in his early period in the 1960s. The film is realized not only as a dance document but also as a Cine-Dance, a term made by Iimura, that is meant to be a choreography of film. The filmmaker "performed" with a camera on the stage in front of the audience. With the main performers: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the film has the highlights such as Butohs of a soldier by Hijikata & a mad woman by Ohno. There is a story of the mad woman, first outcast and ignored, at the end joins to the community through her dance. Inserted descriptions of Anma (The Masseurs) are made for the film by the filmmaker, but were not in the original Butoh. The film, the only document taken of the performance, must be seen for the understanding of Hijikata Butoh and the foundation of Butoh.

A Summer Storm: Butoh of Dark Spirit School(ja)

Ankoku Butoh is a style of avant-garde dance that established itself in the counter culture experimental arts scene of post WWII Japan. The dance form is thought to have been founded by Tatsumi Hijikata, who both created and performed in butoh pieces from the late 1950’s - through the early 1970’s. In butoh, the style of movement is extremely stylized and deliberate, vacillating between slow and sharp, expressing feelings of dread, sexualization, violence, calmness, birth and “creatureness” among other things. This performance of Summer Storm was originally recorded in 1973 at Westside Auditorium, Kyoto University, Japan, and was Hijikata’s last public performance before his death in 1986 with Butoh of Dark Spirit School. Video version produced in 2003.

Flowerbird Butoh: A Way of Life(en)

Comprising historic archive footage and texts this DVD box enlightens us greatly about Yoshito Ohno's here and now. Butoh has a distinct starting point, namely, in 1959, with Kinjiki , a duet featuring Tatsumi Hijikata and Yoshito Ohno. His father, the legendary Kazuo Ohno created another epoch-making opus in 1977 Admiring La Argentina, with Yoshito Ohno as production manager. These links are no mere coincidence. To date, we've tended to overlook Yoshito Ohno, barely granting him the recognition he merits. Just as dance requires a lengthy gestation period in which to evolve, his dance has finally come into our field of vision, in all its freshness and stark-nakedness, linking Butoh's origins to its zenith, to a point where he now stands at a crossroads.

The Body, The Expression of a Creature’s True Nature(ja)

The work contains Butoh works and methods by Tomoe Shizune in omnibus format. It will be re-edited and published based on what was provided as the text for the Butoh course at the Grotowski Institute, Poland by Tomoe Shizune & Hakutobo, 2018. The Grotowski Institute is engaged in a wide range of research related to physical expression, as well as physical training based on the research of the prominent Polish director Jeray Grotowski (1933-1999) who founded the experimental theater "Teatr Laboratorium" in 1959. The coaction between Tomoe's music and Butoh is highlight.

The Naked Summer(ja)

The Naked Summer is a film that documents young artists' effort and growth while training and preparing for a performance of Butou that is praised internationally as a unique art form. Butou was born about 40 years ago as a form of modern dance that pursues the untraditional movement of the body and defies the convention of the human body. As a result, it is known for the dancer's strange facial expressions, naked body covered in white powder, and strong visuals. The film contains the summer training process of the dance group Dairakudakan led by a veteran artist of Butou, Akaji Maro

The Story of a Tree(ja)

This work has been long-awaited as a masterpiece which is not performed in public since it was staged 31 years ago in 1989. This valuable video will be recorded in full and will be released for the first time. The story of a seed that fell to one point on the stage, and a tree that grew bravely and dignifiedly there. Amid the sounds of Tomoe Shizune’s exquisitely beautiful Guitar piece, the dancers’ bodies overflow with life and love of nature.

Kazuo Ohno: Beauty and Strength(ja)

In the 60's and into the 70's, Kazuo Ohno himself produced three 16mm films. His many performances at the "Teatro Fonte" in Yokohama have been preserved with high quality Beta cameras. In addition, the television station NHK has made recordings of many of his theater performances since the premiere of "The Dead Sea" in 1985. Together, the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio and NHK own over one hundred hours of footage. This is complemented by a 1994 film by Daniel Schmid and new 16mm footage of Kazuo Ohno filmed especially for this project in October of 2000. From these resources, this 111 minute Video/DVD was assembled. "Beauty and Strength" includes dance performances, film excerpts and interviews, examples of Ohno's drawings and writings, as well as biographical information, creating a comprehensive look into the world of Kazuo Ohno's dance.

Cherry Blossoms(de)

After finding out that her husband, Rudi, has a fatal illness, Trudi Angermeier arranges a trip to Berlin so they can see their children. Of course, the kids don't know the real reason they're visiting -- and the catch is, neither does Rudi...

Horrors of Malformed Men(ja)

After escaping from an insane asylum, a medical student assumes the identity of a mysterious dead man, who appears to be his doppelganger, and gets lured to a sinister island ruled by a mad scientist and his malformed men.

XXL(sv)

Siblings Enzo and Magda have drifted apart, and in an attempt to reconnect, Magda invites her brother on a trip to Helsinki. Over a weekend, the sibling duo encounters a series of eccentric characters and confronts situations that necessitate conversations about life, art and existence. Memories blend with the present, and dreams and reality merge for the two travelers adrift in the atmospheric city of Helsinki.

Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis(en)

"Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies. Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society.

ASTRAKAN(pt)

Mr O's Book of the Dead(ja)

Mr O’s Book of the Dead is the last of a trilogy of experimental films about Kazuo Ohno, co-founder of the contemporary Japanese style of dance known as butoh, made with director Chiaki Nagano during a period in which he had retired from public performance, and just before he began touring the world as a solo dancer with his celebrated work Admiring La Argentina. In the film, Ohno leads a troupe of strangely dressed, made-up and gesticulating dancers through a succession of landscapes alternately lush, desolate and surreal.

Casting a Light on the Dance of Darkness(en)

“Butoh,” literally “dance of darkness,” is an avant-garde form of dance from Japan that few know about, and even fewer practice. As its only practitioner in Singapore, Xue tells us how she fell in love with this obscure, yet liberating, art form.

Navel and A-Bomb(ja)

Short film in which butoh dancing is used to reflect on the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kamaitachi in The Show: A Butoh Documentary(en)

WHAT IS BUTOH? A French butoh dancer visits Japan for the first time, to pursue this ultimate question. Lead by the shadows of Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of butoh, the journey leads him from metropolitan Tokyo to the snowy fields of Tashiro village in northeastern Akita.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang(en)

A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.

Late Spring(ja)

Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.

The Woman in the Window(en)

A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

Love Streams(en)

Two closely-bound, emotionally wounded siblings reunite after years apart.

Gozu(ja)

Minami mistakenly kills a gangster associate of his named Brother. Almost as soon as the murder takes place, the body of the deceased man is gone, prompting Minami to conduct a search. While looking, he finds a mysterious isolated hotel where he decides to take a rest. Not only are the front desk clerks a bit strange, but even the ambiance feels unusual. Minami soon realizes he may have gotten more than he bargained for.

The Great War(it)

Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.

Summer Interlude(sv)

A jaded prima ballerina reminisces about her first love affair after she is unexpectedly sent her lover's old diary.

Vital(ja)

A young man awakens in the hospital after an accident wipes his memory. Fascinated by a textbook full of drawings of dissections, Hiroshi is drawn to medical school. There he catches the eye of a fellow student, but it's another who becomes his obsession: the dead woman on the cadaver table.

Ivanhoe(en)

Sir Walter Scott's classic story of the chivalrous Ivanhoe who joins with Robin of Locksley in the fight against Prince John and for the return of King Richard the Lionheart.

Mafia Is Not What It Used to Be(it)

Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

Coffee and Cigarettes(en)

Coffee And Cigarettes is a collection of eleven films from cult director Jim Jarmusch. Each film hosts star studded cast of extremely unique individuals who all share the common activities of conversing while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid(en)

Pat Garrett is hired as a lawman on behalf of a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.

The Life of Oharu(ja)

In Edo Period Japan, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.

Police Academy 6: City Under Siege(en)

Our favourite police men are called together to deal with a gang who rob banks and jewelers. Using their various talents as well as their extraordinary luck, the crooks stand no chance against our men and women in blue.

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages(en)

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

The Seventh Continent(de)

Chronicles three years of a middle class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, only troubled by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence however, they are actually planning something sinister.

Female Trouble(en)

Dawn Davenport progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair.

The Curse of the Werewolf(en)

A child conceived by a mute servant girl transforms from an innocent youth to a killer beast at night with uncontrollable urges.

The Traffic Policeman(it)

An unemployed man gets a job as traffic policeman but the traffic in the big city creates innumerous problems for the poor guy.

Seven Chances(en)

Struggling stockbroker Jimmie Shannon learns that, if he gets married by 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday -- which is today -- he'll inherit $7 million from an eccentric relative.