Sakuran first published by Film4 “Cry and you lose. Love and you lose. Win and you lose.” This is what Seiji (Masanobu Ando) tells Kiyoha (Anna Tsuchiya) of her fragile status as a courtesan in 1700s Japan – and as both a whore’s son himself and Head Clerk at the Tamagikuya brothel in the Yoshiwara…
everything first published by EyeforFilm In 2004, two ultra-low budget British films were made that bore a striking, if ultimately superficial, resemblance to one another. Both were shot entirely on Digital Video with a tiny cast and crew, both were divided into nine distinct episodes and both traced the relationship from beginning to end between…
Fucktoys had its world premiere at SXSW on 9 Mar 2025 Annapurna Sriram’s feature debut Fucktoys opens in an irrational space. Despite her youth, AP (played by the film’s writer/director) has been experiencing a run of freakish bad luck and physical maladies, and so has come to consult a Black trans tarot reader (Big Freedia)…
A Desert had its world première at Tribeca, 7 June 2024 A Desert opens in a cinema – not just the one in which perhaps you are watching it if you have not opted for home video or streaming, but in a closed-down, mothballed picture house whose plastic-wrapped interiors the professional photographer Alex Clark (Kai…
Akasen Chitai (aka Streets of Shame) first published by Film4, 9 June 2008 Summary: Kenji Mizoguchi’s final film examines the state of prostitution in Japan at a time of shifting mores. Review: “For all the high moral purpose – they tell us this film was made as propaganda in the campaign to ban legal prostitution in Japan…