Inside Lens

Once the thriving capital of Imperial China, the city of Datong now lies in near ruins, but Mayor Geng Yanbo plans to change all that, announcing a bold, new plan to return Datong to its former glory. Such declarations, however, come at a devastatingly high cost. Thousands of homes are to be bulldozed, and a half-million of its residents will be relocated under his watch. The Chinese Mayor captures, with remarkable access, a man and, by extension, a country leaping frantically into an increasingly unstable future.

"The Priestess Walks Alone" is about Anu, a Taiwanese woman. Anu is a mother, a grandmother, a lesbian and a friend to many. But to her daughter Hui-chen Huang, who filmed the story, Anu is mostly an enigma and a stranger. Anu's life is intrinsically tied to Hui-chen, but Hui-chen spent a good part of her life hating Anu for not providing her with a normal childhood. Now, Hui-chen needs to forgive her mom, and find out who Anu is.

Chinese tourists are going wild on a shopping spree in Japan. Department stores and electronics retail shops are growing up their sales and contributing to Japan’s economic growth. To enhance this trend, Japan changed the Immigration Control Act this January. Now foreigners visiting by ships can easily enter Japan without a visa. We follow a Japanese retail store manager and a group of Chinese tourists to depict this explosive shopping spree, now called "Bakugai".

Tokyo is a densely populated urban area full of high buildings and crowded shopping centers. And the city’s inhabitants have more and more craving for nature. This is why rooftop gardening is becoming increasingly trendy in Tokyo. Some are ordinary gardens, others are community gardens that offer an opportunity for Tokyo inhabitants to grab some soil and feel that they are living in harmony with nature.

Dr. Konta's passion is to help people, who are all too often sent away to die in hospitals or nursing homes away from their friends, families and familiar settings. Through her home hospice care services, patients are given the support needed to return to their homes to die with peace and dignity surrounded by their families and loved ones. Interviews with Dr. Konta are interspersed with scenes of interactions among herself, her patients, their caregivers and families.

Hong Kong is home to more than 190,000 Filipino domestic helpers. A working couple hire one to prepare meals and take their child to school. Another house helper looks after an old man who lives alone. For these and many other reasons, Filipino house helpers are in demand in Hong Kong. On Sundays, the house helpers congregate in a square in Hong Kong Island's Central District. Here, they reminisce about their families back home. A beauty contest is held each June to celebrate Philippine Independence Day. The ladies dress up in their finest as they try to take the crown and live their most precious dream - to be free.

Mogok in Myanmar, a valley surrounded by mountains, is a worldwide well-known as "Ruby Land", Gems Land where only limited foreigners can enter. What's like the gems trading in Mogok where its country has been locked for long time? There's 3,000 mining businesses legally whereas plenty of illegal mining business. People are waiting with hope for the new government policy. "Ruby Land" captures different perceptions of different characters and their related mining business views in this transition period.

Every 2nd Thursday of November, the entire country of South Korea is put to the test. That day, half a million senior high school students and exam repeaters take part in the National University Exam. But the exam isn't a regular school test. The test will be a pathway to obtaining a spot at a prestigious university and landing a job at a top-ranked corporation. "We Repeat" tells the story of 2 exam repeaters, Hyunha and Minjun, to prepare the exam one more year. 10 months before the exam takes place, they live a life of strict routine. On an average day Hyunha gets up as early as 6 a.m. to study and arrives home well after midnight. Minjun enters a private remote boarding school and follows a spartan study schedule.

A highway is waiting to go through a quiet village in Hunan, a province in central China where Mao was from. Due to the high cost of construction, construction companies and migrant workers who live on road work rush to here like the tide. In the following four years, they root in this strange place for interests, paying sweat and blood, even their lives. With their arrival, local village and peasants are forced to change their lives. Many hidden interest lines and hidden rules about road construction of the nation are unveiled, together with the shocking truth and emerging secrets.

‘The Last Factory’ is the story of a textile district in its twilight years, the only soviet style industrial area remained in the western region of China. It follows the lives of a textile worker’s family, the Xiang, whose struggling to adapt in the midst of a rapid redevelopment. As the factory searches for a new path in China’s economical transition, the last generation of workers hope to keep their family in harmony through traditional values.

Speak of Singapore and the image of a clean, corruption-free country springs to mind. But Singapore before the 1980s was a very different place. Among its more sensational tourist hangouts was Bugis Street, which became internationally known for its notorious nightlife. The highlight was its population of male-to-female transgender sex workers. However, in the 1980s, the Government moved in and the girls had to move out. They lost a community they could rely on and a place they could call home. Today, the transgender population struggles to survive in modern Singapore. REVEALING THE INVISIBLE explores the challenges they face to gain acceptance in a fast-changing world.

Hunger drove him to cross the border - a move of desperation which cost him his father and his fingers. A new settler in the unfamiliar South, Byeok Song is known as a former propaganda artist daring to dress "the brilliant and beloved General" in skirts, Byeok Song rose to international acclaim through his depiction of the desolate lives of "the people" in which he expresses his anger towards the regime. Yet, to most people South of the border, he still carries the label of a "commie propagandist." What does peace look like for the artist who served both countries? Traveling to the DMZ and coming face to face with fellow defectors, Song embarks on a long journey to paint a new propaganda work of art depicting the nation's division and peace.

What do a working single woman, a retired couple, a company formed by ex-Sony engineers and a Buddhist priest all have in common? The AIBO robot dog, produced by Sony from 1999 to 2006. Sony discontinued support for the AIBO in 2013. Three years later, AIBO owners all around Japan, still love their AIBO and want to live out the rest of their days with them. This is a touching story about a group of very diverse people who are interconnected by robot dogs and working hard to keep them alive.

Shinduja is a young girl living in a slum area of Pune, India. She is a top student of Banana Children’s Choir run by a Korean singer, Jae-Chang Kim. Shinduja's parents are fish venders and see no future for their daughter's interest in music, but Kim hopes to open them up by involving all parents in a joint concert together. Shinduja urges her parents to go, but her parents often miss the practice due to work. With the concert date approaching, Kim is worried about the performance quality while Shinduja is afraid her parents cannot show up. Finally on the day of the concert, Shinduja’s father closes his fish cart and the whole family performs together on stage.

In Japan, there are many abandoned places. These relics of the recent past are called Haikyos in Japanese. Currently 8 million homes lie empty in the Japanese archipelago due to rural exodus, population aging, transition of life style, the natural disasters... We follow haikyo explorers to an abandoned school in the mountains of Kanto region, meet the owner of an abandoned amusement park in Tohoku region and visit a former coal mining village in Nagasaki which has been gaining an attention as an industrial heritage. We will visit different haikyos to see the evolution of the Japanese society.

Would you risk your life to flip a switch? In Kanpur, India, putting oneself in harm’s way to deliver electrical power is all too common. Powerless sheds light on the opposing corners of this political ring, from an electrical Robin Hood tapping wires for neighbors to the myopic utility company whose failure to understand economics forces it deeper into financial disarray. This vibrant exposé gives a whole new meaning to the words “power struggle.”

This film unveils a hidden history which starts in the Dutch East Indies under Japanese occupation during WW2. The protagonists were born of Eurasian mothers and Japanese fathers as children of the enemy. They moved to the Netherlands with their mothers while their fathers went back to Japan after the war. The absence of their fathers becomes a missing piece in their lives, and the ensuing search stretches across continents. One of the protagonists, Nippy Noya, is the percussionist in a Netherlands-based rock band called Massada. In his career, he also recorded with artists such as John McLaughlin and toured with Billy Cobham and Chaka Khan. The film starts with his soulful drum playing in the ruins of the former Jewish transit camp, Westerbork. On his journey, he discovers the secret of his musical gift, just as the other protagonists each experience their own emotional rebirth. The theatrical version of 'Children's Tears - Searching for Japanese Fathers (49 min.) was released on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in Tokyo and Osaka. The film has toured the theaters in Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kobe. The film won the 33rd Japanese Film Renaissance Award (Japan), International Movie Award 2014 (Indonesia), and was officially selected by DOC Feed 2016 (The Netherlands). The theatrical version continues to be screened.

The Japanese government’s increasing alignment with US military actions in the Islamic world has been impacting this nation’s relationship with the Islamic world. At the same time, there are now dozens of mosques across Japan, and many estimates now put the number of resident Muslims in Japan above one hundred thousand. Against the backdrop of the troubling overseas events, BRIDGING MUSLIMS AND JAPANESE examines how resident Muslims are coping with suspicions and responding with confidence-building activities within their local communities and beyond.

Yuko Nakazawa is the founder and CEO of consumer-tech firm UPQ. She represents a new generation of entrepreneurs who are coming up with new business models. Yuko started off in product development at Casio, designing smartphones and compact cameras. Then, she launched her own company based on the concept of “Made in Japan" with manufacturing done abroad. Yuko's success lies in her ability to respond quickly to the consumer’s needs, producing unique quality-crafted items within a three-month period. We follow Yuko in her daily activities and see creativity in motion as she sets a new pace for consumer business.

Dialita is a choir group that is singing songs that have been silenced for more than 50 years. Members of the choir are survivors, family members, and supporters of those who have been prosecuted during Indonesia's purge against communism starting in 1965. This campaign has imprisoned, tortured, and killed hundred of thousands people who are associated with communism. This year, the choir group is recording and launching an album with young musicians with an aim to get young audience to recognize a dark part of Indonesian history, and to raise from fear and silence.

Gatekeeper is a documentary film following Yukio Shige, a retired police detective, who patrols Tojinbo Cliffs, a notorious destination for suicides in Japan. Shige talks individuals away from the treacherous cliff-sides and brings them back to his unassuming café, where he and his team of volunteers work tirelessly to help suicide attempters recuperate and find their way in a society that stigmatizes mental illness and depression. Shige has spent the last 10 years on a selfless mission to stop potential jumpers from leaping to their deaths. Still, he faces deep odds: Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world; almost double that of Canada. An average of 70 people kill themselves every day. The national suicide in 2014 totaled nearly 25,000 people. These high numbers can be attributed in part to the country’s long history of romanticizing suicide. The historical practice of the Samurais seppuku, a ritual suicide by disembowelment, was celebrated as an honorable gesture of sacrifice and loyalty. This perception, that suicide is honorable, purifying and loyal, persists in contemporary Japanese society. Yukio Shige sees it differently. He recognizes that the cultural mythology attributed to suicide glazes over core universal contributors: economic strife, debt, unemployment, sexual abuse, and mental illness. Shine was driven by his frustration with government inaction to found his own non-profit organization. Similar to other governments around the world, especially in Asia, there continues to be minimal support given to suicide prevention and mental health awareness in Japan. An intimate, observational film, Gatekeeper explores one person’s passion to change society’s misconceptions of suicide. Driven by a deep guilt and an obsession to save lives, Yukio Shige’s story also takes us into a layered exploration of modern Japanese society.

Feeling unfulfilled with life in the city, Itaru Watanabe quit his safe corporate job to follow his dream of opening a bakery in rural Japan. Risking it all, Itaru moves with his family to Chizu, in one of the most depopulated areas of Japan. The ageing town is desperate for new blood and welcomes the family. But life in the countryside is difficult, and success is elusive. He writes a book that becomes a hit with young urbanites that dream of a better life beyond the corporate rat race and start flocking to his bakery. Will Itaru find success in Chizu and help revitalize the battered economy of Japan's countryside?