Non-Asian docs about Asia

A "home movie" by Chris Marker of his visit to Tokyo with his girlfriend, actress Arielle Dombaste, beginning with a chat with a live mannequin in a store window, then through the subway and to the market.

From 1972 until 1974, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, along with a Chinese film crew, documented the last days of the Cultural Revolution, marking the end of an era. The vast amount of footage they shot was edited into twelve films of varying lengths. Focusing on ordinary people spread over a wide geographic area-many of whom were living and working in collectives-the filmmakers recorded a unique moment in history, and also captured some of the more enduring aspects of Chinese culture.

In this surreal documentary legendary Werner Herzog shows us how on the suggestion of a saint, the king of Udaipur invites various artists, tribes from numerous cultures across india to celebrate life and ward off evil.

A dozen aging survivors are interviewed from Jiabiangou, a complex of three work camps in Northwest China where supposed rightists were sent for re-education in the 1950s and 1960s under Mao Zedong.

In 1967 Les Blank and Skip Gerson were hired to work in Thailand on a documentary about the B52 Bomber and its use in bombing campaigns over Vietnam.

In the documentary Bettany Hughes visits 7 sites important to Buddism: Bodh Gaya, India; Bodanath Stupa, Nepal; Temple of The Tooth, Sri Lanka; Wat Pho Temple, Thailand; Angkor Wat, Cambodia; Giant Buddha, Hong Kong; and Hsi Lai Temple, LA.

Moved by the work of director Yasujirô Ozu, Wim Wenders travels to Japan in search of the Tokyo seen in Ozu's films.

A documentary on China, concentrating mainly on the faces of the people, filmed in the areas they were allowed to visit. The 220-minute version consists of three parts. The first part, taken around Beijing, includes a cotton factory, older sections of the city, and a clinic where a Caesarean operation is performed using acupuncture. The middle part visits the Red Flag canal and a collective farm in Henan, as well as the old city of Suzhou. The final part shows the port and industries of Shanghai and ends with a stage presentation by Chinese acrobats.

About Yukio Mishima that highlights the many known major aspects of his life and personality. Mishima was a pen name he adopted en route to his chosen life as a writer.

An elderly, asthmatic filmmaker travels to China, hoping to film the wind.

In a span of ninety minutes the film aims to show how the Netherlands administered its colony as a colonial enterprise and what the relations were like at the time. The usual commentary has been omitted and in its place poems and songs in Bahasa Indonesia have been included in a digital sound composition. In Mother Dao the Turtlelike, the viewer sees how the colonial machinery in the 1920s was implanted in a world so different from Western Europe.

A couple find their erotic love mirrored perfectly in the architecture and mosaics of Iran.

Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, roots himself in cultural visions of space, landscape, and juxtaposition. Inspired deeply by his home and heritage, Ando proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. Believing in the importance of carpentry and craftsmanship, Ando pays tribute to his culture and the way in which architecture is approached through the body. Showcasing his individuality through urban complexes, residences and chapels, Ando presents the work of his formative years, before embarking on projects in Europe and the United States.

Japan's establishment as an economic superpower led to a Golden Age of Japanese architecture. Six innovators stand out particularly, fusing Japanese traditions with modern materials and technology.

The dreadful warfare in Chechnya, a neighbor of Georgia, provides a unique poignancy into Otar Iosseliani's intriguing, four-hour, made-for-television documentary on Georgia.

A tour of Iran filmed from a helicopter.

A documentary that explores the life styles of various otakus in Japan. Various interviews are given to selected otakus who express how interesting it is to be an otaku as oppose to not being one at all. Along with various shots of various Japanese city landscapes and the inside of an average otaku home from rooms filled with videos, models, and the latest in technology.

This documentary made by the Criterion Collection examines the history of the Samurai in Japan. Also looks at what inspired Kurosawa to make his masterpiece 1954 film Seven Samurai in a post WW2 Japan.

A fascinating look at Georgian expat filmmaker Otar Iosseliani through the lens of his former assistant Julie Bertuccelli, focused on his unique working methods and conception of cinema.

The Taiwanese auteur gives French director Assayas, his interviewer, a guided tour of the island country.

Grandrieux pays an homage to Masao Adachi, a Japanese filmmaker with a turbulent past and now a recluse in his homeland, creating a portrait of this man always faithful in its very own way.

Documentary about the director Shohei Imamura. This intimate portrayal arrives to calm us. In good health and enjoying life, Imamura gets drunk methodically in a bar worthy of "An Autumn Afternoon". Then, in the hands of the professional of an hairdresser, he tells his short experience as a director of pornographic films. We salivate with extracts of unknown and invisible films. We find out he his preparing a new film. It sums up the global project of Imamura perfectly: write the counter-history of Japan, from the point of view of the whores and bandits.