Linda Hoaglund

Edo Avant-Garde reveals the pivotal role Japanese artists of the Edo era (1603 – 1868) played in setting the stage for the “modern art” movement in the West. During the Edo era, while a pacified Japan isolated itself from the world, audacious Japanese artists innovated stylization, abstraction, minimalism, surrealism, geometric composition and the illusion of 3-D. Their elegant originality is most striking in images of the natural world depicted on folding screens and scrolls by Sotatsu, Korin, Okyo, Rosetsu, Shohaku and many others who left their art unsigned.

The Gift is a feature-length film exploring a major transformation in peoples' relationships with animals.

Things Left Behind explores the transformative power of 'Hiroshima,' the first major international art exhibit devoted to the atomic bomb. The exhibition, at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada, featured 48 large-format color photographic prints of clothing once worn by those who perished in the atomic bomb, taken by renowned Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako. Ishiuchi brought the garments--still colorful and fashionable nearly seven decades later--out of permanent storage at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial archive and photographed them in the light, to trace the spirits of those who once wore them. The photographs, exhibited without any identifying caption, mutely solicited viewers to imagine or divulge a narrative, and unlocked a wealth of secrets and memories from those who encountered them.

ANPO: Art X War tells the story of Japan's historic resistance to U.S. military bases in Japan through an electrifying array of artwork created by Japan's foremost artists. The film articulates the insidious, lasting impact that the U.S. military presence has had on Japanese lives, and the creative processes that artists have devised to transmit the spirit of resistance.

ANPO: Art X War tells the story of Japan's historic resistance to U.S. military bases in Japan through an electrifying array of artwork created by Japan's foremost artists. The film articulates the insidious, lasting impact that the U.S. military presence has had on Japanese lives, and the creative processes that artists have devised to transmit the spirit of resistance.

仁村雄二は、同じおしぼり工場で働く同僚・有田守と公私ともに淡々とした日常を過ごしている。雄二は他人と上手く渡り合えず無鉄砲な性格。そんな彼を見兼ねた守はある日、彼ら2人だけしか分からない2つのサインを提案し、それを徹底させようとする。その頃から雄二は守が飼っている猛毒の“アカクラゲ”に興味を示すようになった。ある時、守はそのクラゲを雄二に託して突然姿を消す。守は工場の社長夫妻殺害の容疑者として収監されていた。以来、雄二は戸惑いながらも、何かに取り憑かれたようにクラゲの世話を始める。