Yûji Okumura

Movies

History: The Age of the Nuclear Chaos
Director of Photography
10-Feet Movement anti-nuclear documentary film
Prophecy
Director of Photography
This rare documentary is one of the very last efforts from preeminent documentarist/activist Susumu Hani best known for his feature films. This one is a short documentary about the 1945 atomic bombing and its devastating consequences. The film came out of the "10 Foot Movement". A movement organized by the Japan Peace Museum, which mobilized Japanese citizen activists to buy back small segments of film footage of the effects of the atomic bomb from the U.S. National Archives. The film combines recent footage of survivors of the atomic bomb with American archival footage, portraying the sorrow of atomic bomb survivors in the cold war period.
Puppets Under Starry Skies
Director of Photography
A young Japanese man finds himself in the company of a strange, effeminate gay man and a girl with a seedy sexual history and who even now is pregnant again. They share a predisposition for drug use and spend time together in an old house. He refuses the advances of the gay man, who then commits suicide. When a gang administers a beating to him, his father re-enters the scene and takes him home, along with the girl. However, the girl has decided to have her baby, and she goes to live with its father.
Dokkoi! Songs from the Bottom
Director of Photography
After the waning of the protests in Sanrizuka, Ogawa Pro started questioning the future of the collective and looking for other subjects to film. Following the method developed in the previous films, the filmmakers moved to the slum of Kotobuchi in the port city of Yokohama, where more than 6000 people were struggling to get by without any means of survival, exposed to industrial accidents and diseases. The result is one of the most moving films produced by the collective, a series of beautifully filmed portraits, voicing the silenced stories and songs of a group of people living in this community. Credit: ICA London
Lost Lovers
Director of Photography
A rebel youth joins a duo of entertainers only able to communicate by gesturing; when the female performer is suddenly abducted, he and Takeru must take action.
Love Fantasia
Director of Photography
A musical comedy.
The Walking Major
Director of Photography
U.S. Army Captain Clark Allen gains attention by walking back and forth, the length of Japan, gambling with U.S. servicemen in order to raise funds to rebuild an orphanage. Suspicious of Allen's motives, a Japanese newsman, Hiroshi Kitabayashi, traces the American's background until he discovers the motive behind Allen's long walk.
Aido: Slave of Love
Director of Photography
Aido is a beautiful woman cursed with an insatiable appetite for sex. After an affair with a young student, she engages in several other affairs in which she can no longer tell fantasy from reality.
Farewell to the Summer Light
Director of Photography
A spontaneous romance blooms between Kawamura, a professor touring Europe, and Naoko, a married woman living in Paris, scarred by the Nagasaki atomic bombings. The two protagonists travel around Europe trying to find themselves.
Nanami: The Inferno of First Love
Director of Photography
A teenage goldsmith with a dark past tragically falls in love with a young nude model.
Affair in the Snow
Director of Photography
In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.
Impasse
Director of Photography
Shingo and Ritsuko have a baby: Takashi. They happen to be a happy couple, but soon Ritsuko wants to know who is the true father of Takashi, born by artificial insemination.
Sea of Youth
Director of Photography
Ogawa Shinsuke’s directorical debut traces the struggle of four students who lead the opposition against the Ministry of Education’s proposed revision to the university correspondence school systems in 1966.