Akio Jissôji

Based on renowned Japanese writer Natsume Soseki's same-titled short story collection, Ten Nights Of Dreams brings ten fantastical dream sequences to film with great visual and psychological panache. Representing the combined efforts of ten directors, this outstanding anthology delves into the surreal subconscious with ten madly imaginative, reality-subverting visions that range from wonderfully wacky to nightmarishly unsettling.

This is the last film of the ATG trilogy of the director Akio Jissoji, who sought the roots of inner psychology and eroticism. It’s a story of a young man who turns his back on the modern world, seeking to be a protector of a family and heads to his destruction.

Utamaro was an artist who lived in Edo (which was later to become modern-day Tokyo) in the late 18th century. This film, which has a complex and wide-ranging storyline, recreates the world of that time, as it appeared in Utamaro's paintings. In one the many scenes captured by the story, Utamaro watches the goings-on in a brothel while hidden in its attic.

A decadent count in 1920's Japan becomes obsessed with the life and works of the Marquis de Sade. He creates a theatre to show plays adapted from the notorious writer's novels and recruits thieves, prostitutes and low lives to act out his fantasies on stage for the delectation of his rich, jaded friends. In search of new sensations the nobleman orders one of the actors, on pain of death, to make love to the nobleman's wife while he watches. Unfortunately, this incursion of real life into his fantasy world will have dire consequences for the count and his divinely decadent coterie. Sumptuously filmed by one of world cinema greatest stylists - Akio Jissoji, famed director of the Ultraman series - this surreal and beautiful film is full of startling images. With a gripping and dramatic storyline, it's a feast for the eyes as well as the mind. This is the first time the film has been released outside Japan. A classic waiting to be discovered.

Mars Canal - Within absolute silence, a naked man wanders through a dark and depressing landscape recalling the excruciating details of his last encounter with his former lover…

A married couple travels in order to engage in a swing practice, there being attacked by a group of maniacs. Strangely interested in their attackers they begin to search for them and end up turning adepts of their sexual-magic community.

Rampo Noir is an anthology film that loosely adapts four short stories by Japan's foremost crime/mystery writer Edogawa Rampo (a pseudonym inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.) Often called Japan's Edgar Allan Poe, Rampo's macabre tales frequently involve eccentric and/or disfigured characters enmeshed in bizarre plots that can include anything from a wife who turns her husband into a 'caterpillar' to a chair-maker who buries himself inside one of his own armchairs so women can sit on him. Other (Japanese) films based on Rampo's writing include: Blind Beast, The Horror of Malformed Men and Watcher in the Attic.