Throughout the 1980s, Shohei Imamura (The Pornographers, Profound Desires of the Gods), a leading figure of the Japanese New Wave era of the 1960s, cemented his international reputation as one of the most important directors of his generation with a series of films that all competed at Cannes to ...

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 Hollywood version of Lady Windermere’s Fan is often misquoted as the first screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s enduringly popular 1892 play. In fact, the British got there first, with this early silent feature made nearly a decade before Lubitsch’s film. While the lack of act...

Legendary Toei director Ishii’s politically incorrect moral lessons paint a trio of tales of tragic heroines caught up in violence, sadomasochism, incest and torture. Told in anthology style by an impassive physician (Teruo Yoshida), the first story follows Oito (Masumi Tachibana), an innocent yo...