Movies: Pole Pole Times

This documentary was filmed at Maki, a small commune at the foot of Japan’s Northern Alps in Nagano Prefecture. Maki is deep in the mountains, inaccessible to vehicles. The residents have to walk a narrow mountain path for 90 minutes to get in or out...

A documentary film taking up the long-living giant Baobab trees as its theme. It is shot by photographer Motohashi Seiichi, known as the director of Alexei and the Spring (Alexei to Izumi) and others. Set in Senegal in West Africa, where modernizatio...

Before the Chernobyl disaster, Nadja's village was home to 300 peasant families. After evacuation, only 6 households remain and access to the village is shut off. The remaining villagers continue to raise livestock, cultivate crops, and continue with...

There is a small island where agriculture arrived 1,000 years ago when the inhabitants rescued people from a wrecked ship. The island became prosperous and the culture of the island has been handed down from generation to generation. Iwai Island, Ka...

180 kilometers down wind of Chernobyl, the village of Budische was evacuated except for 55 older residents who refused to leave and one young man, Alexei who wanted to stay with his parents. This is a simple story of life in Budische 14 years later, ...

The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over f...

A documentary by Nobuo Ōnishi, who follows the people living in the area where Tokuyama Dam is planned to be built. In 1957, talk arose that Japan's largest dam would be built in Tokuyama Village, Gifu Prefecture. While the residents moved to new loc...