Asian Cinema
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Agent of Happiness
Movie
How is happiness measured? Can satisfaction with one’s life be rated on a scale from one to ten? The Kingdom of Bhutan’s famous – and highly exoticized – government policy measuring its nation’s Gross National Happiness operates on the idea that the basic tenets of fulfillment can and should be q...
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Picture of Spring
Movie
Yumiko Haruno works as a waitress at a cafe that has been around for a long time. She spends her days aimlessly and without a dream for her future. On an ordinary day at her job, Yumiko notices middle-aged man Ichirou Haga looking intently at shunga (Japanese erotic paintings that were popular du...
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Wet Woman in the Wind
Movie
A tornado of unbridled sexual desire is unleashed when a free spirited seductress sets her sights on a reclusive playwright. Wet Woman in the Wind highlights the id in its stream of consciousness tale. Having a character who overturns the inhibitions of all that cross her path with wild abandon a...
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The Nude Woman
Movie
Saeko, a 27-year-old housewife without children, loves reading books and often goes to an nearby library. She accidentally comes across a dirty magazine filled with pictures of naked women. Among the photos, she finds one of a young woman who seems different than all the others and, out of curios...
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Shunga: The Lost Japanese Erotica
Movie
Discover shunga, the explicit and exquisite form of Japanese erotic art which reached its height between 1600 and 1900, in this immersive documentary that reveals the beauty, detailed craft, and extraordinary imagination behind these powerful scrolls and prints in addition to their important hist...
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The Gospel of the Beast
Movie
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...
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A Far Shore
Movie
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...
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Autobiography
Movie
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...
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Hero
Movie
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...
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The Illegal Immigrant
Movie
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...
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The Puppet
Movie
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...
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Okiku and the World
Movie
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...
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Human Lanterns
Movie
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,...
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The Golden Lotus
Movie
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...
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Farewell My Concubine
Movie
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...
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Asia-pol
Movie
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...
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Girl's Blood
Movie
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...
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Before, Now & Then
Movie
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...
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Facets of Love
Movie
Legends are born and dreams become reality in three tales centering around an ancient Ming Dynasty brothel. Brought to life by visionary filmmaker Han Hsiang Li, Hong Kong's undisputed king of epic drama. these tales steam with erotic myths, secret trysts and romantic twists of fate.
“A stirring...
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Under the Open Sky
Movie
Mikami (Koji Yakusho), a middle-aged yakuza, gets released from prison after serving a 13-year murder sentence. Hoping to find his long lost mother, who abandoned him as a child, he agrees to be the subject of a television documentary. But his impulsive, adamant nature and ingrained beliefs cause...
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Illicit Desire
Movie
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 ...
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Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan
Movie
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...
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Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan
Movie
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...
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Return to Dust
Movie
In rural Gaotai county, two lonely, middle-aged outcasts are pushed into an arranged marriage by their families. Ma (Wu Renlin) is a humble farmer with little to offer his timid and sickly wife, Cao (Hai Qing), except for a small abandoned house on a barren patch of land. From just a few seeds, t...