Horrors of Malformed Men

Horrors of Malformed Men 1969

5.70

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.

1969

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms 2008

7.40

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...

2008

Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis 1990

8.00

"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.

1990

Dawn

Dawn 2020

1

A Collaboration Ima Tenko and Chie Ono.

2020

Casting a Light on the Dance of Darkness

Casting a Light on the Dance of Darkness 2024

1

“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.

2024

Dance of Darkness

Dance of Darkness 1989

9.00

The dark sensibilities and cultural resonances of Butoh, the radical Japanese dance movement, are explored in this multilayered work. Profoundly rooted in both traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, Butoh arose in a spirit of revolt in the early 1960s. Characterized by frank sexuality and bodily distortions, Butoh transforms traditional dance movements into new forms, stripping away the taboos of contemporary Japanese culture to reveal a secret world of darkness and irrationality.

1989

Dandy

Dandy 1988

6.30

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

1988

Mr O's Book of the Dead

Mr O's Book of the Dead 1973

6.50

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.

1973

The Body, The Expression of a Creature’s True Nature

The Body, The Expression of a Creature’s True Nature 2020

1

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.

2020

Rose Color Dance

Rose Color Dance 1965

1

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.

1965

Goblet of Lapiz Iazuli

Goblet of Lapiz Iazuli 2023

1

Fill the goblet of lapis Iazuli With the life, joy, sorrow, death of this whole universe. This goblet must scoop up all. Who drifts in the isle of hollow. Mothers, babies, Sick women, filthy women, Those who praz, those who surfei, and those who accompany them. The moon goes around and attracts everything. Let us give a toast, Till the earth in the goblet turn inside out.

2023

Navel and A-Bomb

Navel and A-Bomb 1960

5.30

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

1960

Kamaitachi in The Show: A Butoh Documentary

Kamaitachi in The Show: A Butoh Documentary 2019

1

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.

2019

Flesh, Board, and Nails

Flesh, Board, and Nails 1970

1

A man details his crimes and pleasures within an armchair to an adulterer who sees the people in his life as nothing more than objects.

1970

Flowerbird Butoh: A Way of Life

Flowerbird Butoh: A Way of Life 2015

1

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.

2015

The Masseurs

The Masseurs 1963

1

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.

1963