Why do 600 inhabitants of the small southern Spanish town of Coria del Río bear the surname "Japón"? It is the legacy of an unusual expedition that took place 400 years ago: In October 1613, the samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga boarded the galleon "San Juan Bautista" on behalf of the ruler Date Masamune in Sendai, Japan. In addition to merchants, warriors and Spanish sailors, the Spanish Franciscan monk Luis Sotelo, who spoke fluent Japanese, also embarked. The legation wanted to obtain permission from the Spanish King Philip III and Pope Paul V to open a new sea route to India alongside the spice route; in return, Christian missionaries were to be sent to Japan. When he set off, Hasekura Tsunenaga had no idea that the journey would take seven years. Who was this Japanese samurai? What is known about his motives and what is known about the actual background to the expedition?
Hasekura Tsunenaga
Luis Sotelo
Why do 600 inhabitants of the small southern Spanish town of Coria del Río bear the surname "Japón"? It is the legacy of an unusual expedition that took place 400 years ago: In October 1613, the samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga boarded the galleon "San Juan Bautista" on behalf of the ruler Date Masamune in Sendai, Japan. In addition to merchants, warriors and Spanish sailors, the Spanish Franciscan monk Luis Sotelo, who spoke fluent Japanese, also embarked. The legation wanted to obtain permission from the Spanish King Philip III and Pope Paul V to open a new sea route to India alongside the spice route; in return, Christian missionaries were to be sent to Japan. When he set off, Hasekura Tsunenaga had no idea that the journey would take seven years. Who was this Japanese samurai? What is known about his motives and what is known about the actual background to the expedition?
2018-08-30
8
After a wonderful time in Hungary Sissi falls extremely ill and must retreat to a Mediterranean climate to rest. The young empress’ mother takes her from Austria to recover in Madeira.
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
Four divers are stuck deep underwater in a vessel after a freak storm destroys their ship. Will they survive?
An inspirational speaker becomes reinvigorated after meeting a lively woman who shakes up his mundane existence.
Sissi is now the empress of Austria and attempts to learn etiquette. While she is busy being empress she also has to deal with her difficult new mother-in-law, while the arch-duchess Sophie is trying to tell the emperor how to rule and also Sissi how to be a mother.
This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.
An ambitious mobster plans an elaborate diamond heist while seducing the daughter-in-law of a ruthless mob patriarch as a determined police commissioner closes in on all of them.
After their mother passes away, sisters Nicole and Annie reluctantly return to their childhood home to pay their last respects. While staying overnight in the house, the sisters sense a mysterious presence in their midst: noises startling them in the night, objects moving about, a fallen picture of an unknown woman posed next to their mother. Annie begins experiencing a series of intense and disturbing dreams - visions that lead her to uncover something terrible about her mother's past that is finally revealing itself.
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
A funny and intelligent comedy about a wonderfully flawed woman.
The sharks take bite out of the East Coast when the sharknado hits Washington, D.C. and Orlando, Florida.
A group of friends are planning how to spend their summer vacation. One plans to go to the Seychelles with his American girlfriend. At the airport she dumps him for another guy. He has no money so he steals a backpack and goes camping. Somehow he meets a pretty girl and convinces her to share his tent. But a famous singer sees the girl and wants her too. He convinces the luckless guy to act like a fool and the girl leaves him and goes with the singer to the French Rivera.
The four old friends meet on the grave of the fifth of them, Perozzi, who died at the end of the first episode. Time has passed but they are still up for adventures and cruel jokes, and while they recall the one they created together with the late friend, new ones are on their way, starting right there at the cemetery.
Laney is an attractive, intelligent suburban wife and devoted mother of two adorable children. She has the perfect husband who plays basketball with the kids in the driveway, a pristine house, and a shiny SUV for carting the children to their next activity. However, just beneath the façade lie depression and disillusionment that send her careening into a secret world of reckless compulsion. Only very real danger will force her to face the painful root of her destructiveness and its crumbling effect on those she loves.
A scholar in search of true love. Disguising himself as a houseboy, he indentures himself to a rich family in order to pursue the ravishing servant girl who has stolen his heart.
Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.
As the global economy teeters on the brink of disaster, a young Wall Street trader partners with disgraced former Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko on a two tiered mission: To alert the financial community to the coming doom, and to find out who was responsible for the death of the young trader's mentor.
Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.
In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
A tale of murder, crime and punishment set in the summer of 1949. Ed Crane, a barber in a small California town, is dissatisfied with his life, but his wife Doris' infidelity and a mysterious opportunity presents him with a chance to change it.
In Edo-era Japan, a ukiyo-e artist languishes in his master’s shadow. Creatively stifled, he finds consolation in the company of a prostitute, and becomes entangled in a love triangle. A mystery emerges involving two portraits and the sudden disappearance of the artist Sharaku. Helmed by Cannes-selected director Tatsuji Yamazaki, the film employs kabuki-inspired sequences and stylised sets.
The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.
The ever versatile Kazuki Kitamura stars as masterless samurai Kyutaro Madarame, a feared swordsman who has fallen on hard times in old Edo. Caught between two warring gangs in an epic battle of cat lovers and dog lovers, he begrudgingly accepts the canine faction's offer to assassinate the opposite leader's beloved pet: an adorable white cat. Yet upon raising his lethal sword, he cannot bring himself to go through with the act, and the cat melts his ronin heart. But before finding peace as a newly minted cat person, the still fearsome Madarame will have to take on both gangs in a classic samurai street brawl.
22nd of August, 1945. Japan lost the war and they loaded an 8,000 person Joseon laborer force onto a ship called the Ukisima to take them to the Busan Port. However, the ship sunk into the water due to an unknown blast. This is the story of thousands of Joseon people who dreamed of returning to their families and how they died.
Sen no Rikyu (Ebizo Ichikawa) is the son of a fish shop owner. Sen no Rikyu then studies tea and eventually becomes one of the primary influences upon the Japanese tea ceremony. With his elegant esthetics, Sen no Rikyu is favored by the most powerful man in Japan Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Nao Omori) and becomes one of his closest advisors. Due to conflicts, Toyotomi Hideyoshi then orders Sen no Rikyu to commit seppuku (suicide). Director Mitsutoshi Tanaka's adaptation of Kenichi Yamamoto's award-winning novel of the same name received the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the 37th Montréal World Film Festival, the Best Director Award at the 2014 Osaka Cinema Festival, the 30th Fumiko Yamaji Cultural Award and the 37th Japan Academy Film Prize in nine categories, including Best Art Direction, Excellent Film and Excellent Actor.
In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words used by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.
Japan blossomed into its Renaissance at approximately the same time as Europe. Unlike the West, it flourished not through conquest and exploration, but by fierce and defiant isolation. And the man at the heart of this empire was Tokugawa Ieyasu, a warlord who ruled with absolute control. This period is explored through myriad voices-- the Shogun, the Samurai, the Geisha, the poet, the peasant and the Westerner who glimpsed into this secret world.
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
Kintaro Walks Japan is a documentary film produced and directed by Tyler MacNiven. It is an account of MacNiven's journey walking and backpacking the entire length of Japan from Kyūshū to Hokkaidō, more than 2000 miles in 145 days.
A bitter battle is fought between Australian and Japanese soldiers along the Kokoda trail in New Guinea during World War II.
Narrated by Dan Aykroyd, Defend, Conserve, Protect, pits the marine conservation group, Sea Shepherd, against the Japanese whaling fleet, in an epic battle to defend the majestic Minke whales.
A documentary film chronicling the rehearsal, preparation and performance of a Fishmans concert performed on February 19, 2019 @Zepp Tokyo.
Oda Nobunaga and Nōhime were originally married to mend a hostile relationship between neighbouring regions. Unfortunately, they were like oil and water, making for a somewhat unhappy marriage. When Oda's enemy, Imagawa Yoshimoto, attacks Owari with his vast army, Oda is devastated by the overwhelming gap in military strength. However, Nohime encourages him not to despair, and the pair draw up a tactical plan that will allow them to overcome the odds.
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.
Joe Enders is a gung-ho Marine assigned to protect a "windtalker" - one of several Navajo Indians who were used to relay messages during World War II because their spoken language was indecipherable to Japanese code breakers.
Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them.
A daughter is constantly overshadowed by her famous father, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world.