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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
A recent widow has invited a group of family friends to her large and secluded country home. However, what the guests don't know is that the reason they've been assembled is that their host suspects one of them might be her husband's killer and she's intent on uncovering the identity of his murderer.
The innkeeper Barnabáš and the teacher Isidor Slovíčko succumb to the lure of old Moreles, to whom the young Taussig sends enthusiastic letters from America.
The Sienese Pia Tolomei is imprisoned in a castle by a jealous husband. Based on the novel by Marguerite Yourcenar, inspired by a story from the Italian Middle Ages.
Cliff works as a narcotics investigator for the police and infiltrate a mafia gang. Soon it turns out that Cliff has bigger plans than just to bust bad guys.
A film demonstrating steps to take in the event of a nuclear attack. Animated drawings show the effects of atomic explosions in the air and at ground level.
