Kiyoshi Awazu

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.

The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokugawa Period, a time in which appearances are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojō for the honor to perform the tea ceremony to celebrate the birth of an heir to the lord of their clan. To see the sacred tea scrolls Gonza promises to marry the daughter of the family which possesses them, even though he is unofficially engaged to another. When studying the scrolls with Osai, the mother of the house, Bannojō sneaks into the house and steals their obis and runs through the town proclaiming the two as adulterers.

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching.

A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.

When a lone traveler stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town’s inhabitants, including lovers Akira and Yuri, in their hands.

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.

Follows a young med student's relationships with two women: a dangerous affair with a childhood friend and his mother's struggle to rebuild their estranged relationship.

The myth of the Sun Goddess who founded Japanese society is seen through the lens of a modern view of history.

Two Jesuit priests encounter persecution when they travel to Japan in the 17th century to spread Christianity and search for their mentor.

During the Vietnam War, an American G.I. deserts his base in Japan and escapes to Tokyo with the help of his Japanese bar hostess girlfriend. In the capital he gets involved with an anti-war organization while dodging the military police.

A documentary profiling a Japanese taiko drumming group based in the remote Sado Island, Japan. The film blurs the line between real-life documentary footage of the troupe's training and practice regimes, and staged performances of their varied musical acts, with sets designed by artist Tadanori Yokoo and an additional experimental electronic music score by Toshi Ichiyanagi.

This is a documentary centered on traditional Japanese patterns. To capture the unique sensibility of the Japanese people, the film features 170 kimono fabrics from the Muromachi to Edo periods, along with over 1,000 family crests that have been passed down through generations. These elements are presented using avant-garde visual techniques. Viewed from a modern perspective, the film transforms the exceptional patterns created by the Japanese in the past into a completely new illustrated scroll. The entire documentary contains no narration, relying solely on visuals and music to convey its message.

Since 1975 Kiyoshi Awazu has been obsessed with the "designer" Antonio Gaudi. Then there was no stopping this man. He went to Barcelona, took his own 16mm camera, made a film, wrote a book called "In Praise of Gaudi" and was the main force behind the subsequent tour of the Gaudi exhibition in Japan. (Ken Awazu).

From renowned Japanese graphic designer and multidisciplinary artist Awazu Kiyoshi, Furyu (1972) is a testament to the ephemeral beauty of interplaying light and shadow. This experimental 16mm film exhibits the shadows of trees arching and swaying in the wind, visible as eerie shapes on the bare walls of a white house, alongside an evolving soundscape of intensifying oral vibrato and piercing instrumental pitches. A rarely shown sensorial experience.

Famed Japanese jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita expresses his burning passion for music by setting his piano on fire. "I think though it is just a ten minute of performance, it holds an essence of artistic expression because he risked his life and career and took a serious approach to a project which is very ephemeral and unperfectible" (Ken Awazu).

A 16mm film by Kiyoshi Awazu.