Kamaitachi in The Show: A Butoh Documentary

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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,” 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.