Yoshiko Chuma

A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real "corporate wars" and the manipulation of politicians.

Real-life kung fu master Nathan Ingram stars in this gritty, low-budget martial arts epic as a local karate school owner who clashes with a gang of drug traffickers posing as the owners of a rival dojo. Director Charlie Ahearn (who helmed the landmark hip-hop film Wild Style) used the housing projects next to his New York Lower East Side apartment as his central location in this 1979 classic, shot on a vintage Super 8 camera.

"Lurking crime and lingering desire change the atmosphere of this brief but affecting film. The light changes moment by moment. The season is shifting. Figures move like phantoms in the penumbra. Beethoven glowers against the evening; a perfect Alice polishes bronze with her petticoat; traffic in diamonds and rubies twines its way among the trees; snarling youths self-destruct. The false promises of youth, beauty and art are the smoke out the windows of fire along Fifth Avenue." -- Christopher Sweet

The first film of Yoshiko Chuma shows simple motion and action in front of the landscape in Maine, USA.

Shot in the subway of New York without permission in 1982. The members of the cast were the School of Hard Rocks.

The film travels through the urban canyons, parking decks and rooftops of New York, where choreographer Yoshiko Chuma and actor John Nesci explore the textures and architecture of the city through engagement with movement and objects. Finally, the journey leads to the natural landscape of Maine where Jacob Burckhardt’s camera captures the movements of leaves, water, light, and a raft floating in the fog.