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Asian Cinema

Asian Cinema

Cinema has been a part of Asian cultures for more than a century. We offer a selection of films from older classic titles (King Hu's THE FATE OF LEE KHAN) to more recent family dramas by the Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda, along with films from Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.

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Asian Cinema
  • The Extremists' Opera

    When theater director Naoko (Saori) holds auditions for the first production of her newly established all-female theater troupe, she is mesmerized by Haru (Arisa Nakamura), who barges into the old garage where they rehearse. Naoko chooses Haru to be the lead and leverages her power as director to...

  • A Far Shore

    Aoi is a seventeen-year-old mother living in Okinawa who drops out of school so she can work an illegal job as a nightclub hostess for rent money. Struggling to protect her child while trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of poverty and violence with her deadbeat husband, she turns to ever m...

  • The Gospel of the Beast

    After his father goes missing, fifteen-year-old Mateo takes responsibility for his two younger siblings. But when a confrontation with a classmate escalates to violence and leads to the boy's accidental death, Mateo seeks help from Berto, a local gang leader whom he barely knows. Berto introduces...

  • Flaming Cloud

    Above the clouds the Gods of heaven bet on human sorrows and joys in a celestial casino for their amusement. They select a newborn boy, Wang Sangui, and curse him with a strange affliction - everyone he kisses falls into a deep slumber. Only true love can break the spell. As he grows into adultho...

  • Autobiography

    In a rural Indonesian town, young Rakib works as the lone housekeeper of an empty mansion belonging to Purna, a retired general whose family his ancestors have served for centuries. When Purna returns home to run for mayor, Rakib bonds with the older gentleman, who becomes his mentor. But after a...

  • Tomorrow Is a Long Time

    Seventeen-year-old Meng leads an unfulfilling existence in Singapore, living at home with his austere, hard-working exterminator father, while being coerced and bullied by his peers at school. Everything changes when he is forced into compulsory military service early and embarks on a life-alteri...

  • Winner Takes All

    A series of robberies committed by Japanese ninjas and bearing the stamp of the Shihs, a once-notorious family of burglars, attracts the interest of Kuan Te-hsing (Wang Yu) and Richard Burt (Mai Te-lo), two lowly assistants in the Yang Detective Agency. Meanwhile, a Japanese girl hires them to un...

  • Kung Fu Rookie

    Country bumpkin Timuchin comes to the city to enroll in the police academy. There he is pranked by a lovely young woman who eventually cottons to his courtship. When they run afoul of local gangsters his Dudley Do-Right persona and studied obsession with martial arts send him on a bare-fisted mis...

  • Hero

    Like many impoverished villagers at the end of the Qin Dynasty, Ma Yong Zhen (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a pugilist from Shantung, moves to big city with his brother to seek his fortune. Initially finding work as a manual laborer, Ma becomes enamored by the lifestyle of local gang boss Tam See (Yuen Bia...

  • The Illegal Immigrant

    With the help of a crime syndicate, Chang Chun-chiu travels from Canton to New York’s Chinatown by way of Hong Kong. There, he enters into a sham marriage with the sister of a friend in order to obtain a green card and works at a Canal Street sweatshop to pay off his debts. Immigration authoritie...

  • The Puppet

    Ji-hoon, a jaded psychiatrist is visited by Hyun-jin, the beautiful fiancée of his colleague, who is suffering from disturbing hallucinations. He uses hypnotism to seek answers into her dark past, only to find himself wrapped up in her delusions and falling for her charms. Soon, Ji-hoo crosses th...

  • Okiku and the World

    In the mid-19th century, Okiku lives in a tenement row house in the sprawling city of Edo. There, she cares for her father, Genbei, a former samurai, whom she supports by teaching children in a temple school. Yasuke and his newly recruited partner, Chuji, regularly visit the tenement to collect t...

  • Human Lanterns

    In this maniacal mashup of martial arts and the macabre, a psychotic retired swordsman (Lo Lieh) finds a unique way to get retribution for his past humiliations while seeking vengeance on his enemies. Inside his secret workshop, he creates lanterns made from the human skin of his rivals’ sisters,...

  • The Golden Lotus

    In this Shaw Brothers adaptation of the most erotic novel in Chinese history, director Han Hsiang Li recounts the depraved exploits of a Sung Dynasty lothario. Hsi Men-ching (Yeung Kwan) already has one wife and three concubines, but that does not stop him from coveting for more. He eventually re...

  • Farewell My Concubine

    Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) grow up enduring the harsh training of the Peking Opera Academy, where instructors regularly beat the students to instill in them the discipline needed to master the complex physical and vocal techniques of this ancient art. As the two b...

  • Girl's Blood

    Satsuki is a karate expert with a gender identity disorder. Chinatsu is on the run from her abusive husband. Miko works part-time as an S&M queen, and Mayu is a baby face Lolita. Four women with very different life stories come together at Girl's Blood, a members-only, illegal mixed martial arts...

  • Asia-pol

    It’s not Interpol, it's Asia-pol, a law enforcement agency somewhere between the police and Her Majesty's Secret Service. Jimmy Wang Yu (One-Armed Swordsman) stars in his first major modern day role as a down and dirty secret agent battling against homicidal Japanese gold smugglers amidst femme f...

  • By a Man's Face Shall You Know Him

    In postwar Japan a downtrodden neighborhood is nearly torn apart when a Korean gang tries to take over the local market. As anger escalates to the brink, tough as nails WWII veteran Dr. Amamiya (played by real life former yakuza Noboru Ando) steps in to stop the conflict.

    Director Tai Kato’s gr...

  • I, the Executioner

    As the police investigate a sudden rash of brutal murders whose victims are all women the unscrupulous killer’s murky motivations remain hauntingly elusive. A labyrinthine character study slowly unfolds implying that the targets of these unspeakable acts may be culpable in their own shocking demi...

  • Before, Now & Then

    Nana (Happy Salma), the beautiful wife of a wealthy plantation owner, values her safety and material comforts but carries out a haunted existence, dreaming of her lost love who was murdered years ago during the Indonesian Revolution. Forced to confront her husband’s blatant infidelity, Nana makes...

  • Facets of Love

    Legends are born and dreams become reality in three tales centering around a Ming Dynasty brothel. Brought to life by visionary filmmaker Han Hsiang Li, Hong Kong's undisputed king of epic drama, this anthology of forbidden stories steams with erotic myths, secret trysts and romantic twists of fa...

  • Illicit Desire

    Tang Dynasty emperors and Ming Dynasty scholars along with assorted fortune tellers and Buddhist monks comprise the cast of characters in three mystical Chinese legends. Brought to life by director Han Hsiang Li, the undisputed master of the Hong Kong costume epic, this erotic anthology presents ...

  • Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan

    In her most daring role, Lily Ho plays Ainu, a beautiful girl who is abducted and sold into prostitution. Under the tutelage of the cunning madam Lady Chun (Betty Pei Ti), Ainu becomes the most desirable courtesan of the Four Seasons Spring Brothel. But she soon finds herself caught in a web of s...

  • Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan

    Kidnapped and forced to work in Merryland brothel, the beautiful Ai Nu (Hu Kuan-chen) at first tries to resist her captors but soon learns a seductive new path of survival, pursuing fame and fortune under the cunning tutelage of madam Lady Chun (Yu An-an).

    Director Chu Yuan returns to his erotic...