Samurai Rebellion / Jouiuchi (1967)
Another slow burn samurai film from Kobayashi Masaki, this time starring Toshiro Mifune. Not quite as cinematic as Harakiri but beautiful nonetheless. The quality in choreography I find to have improved quite a bit. The cast is made up of many of his usual collaborators, including Tatsuya Nakadai in a supporting role. Fun fact, they had TV drama versions in both 1992 & 2013.
Le Mystere Koumiko / The Koumiko Mystery (1965)
A documentary (of sorts) by Chris Marker. While shooting the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the narrator (Marker) interviews Kumiko, a beautiful Manchurian born, French educated Japanese. Being herself somewhat of a stranger in a strange land, she shares with him her thoughts on then modern day Japan. For anyone that has followed urban photography in Japan for the last 50 years or actually just watched how quickly Japan changes, unsurprisingly the city is almost unrecognizable. Also unsurprisingly, many of the questions raised in this video essay could be asked today, over half a decade later.
This was a real treat. First, I doubt any "good" versions of this exist anywhere. I'm assuming it was shot on 16mm with no sync'ed audio track, a la San Soleil. With no wide release, one can only imagine what conditions the original film is left in. (All presumptions on my part). You can see the whole thing with it's original subtitles burned into the film on Youtube. However, this looks like it was sourced from a well-aged VHS cassette or other magnetic format. There are other places with it where you can overlay an accompanying subtitles file which will give your eyes a bit of a rest. The audio on mine only came from the right channel which further irked me but I got over it.
Somewhat intrigued as to whether Kumiko Muraoka was a real person with any background, I googled a bit once the plane had landed. Sure enough, what she's portrayed as is indeed true. If one Googles her name w/ the "improper" romanization found in the title of the film, there is
an interview with her daughter where we learn she was a writer (of sorts?) and had twin daughters. I found this to be quite an interesting follow up to such a hidden gem.