A Man Vanishes [4 Discs] [DVD]

This box set pays homage to one of the godfathers of Japanese cinema, Shohei Imamura, with a series of long-lost works from his catalogue. First on the bill is A Man Vanishes (1967), an offbeat study of a mysterious businessman named Tadashi who appears to have vanished into thin air; as the picture rolls forward, uncertainties about his life emerge and eventually the veracity of the film itself, as a documentary, becomes uncertain. The remainder of the collection features several more straightforward documentaries that Imamura created for Japanese television: In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Thailand and In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Malaysia each find Imamura undertaking an exhaustive search for Japanese soldiers who have permanently forsaken live in their native country to live in the titular nations; The Pirates of Bubuan finds Imamura, camera-in-hand, exploring sketchy, potentially felonious activity on the oceans just outside of the Philippines. Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home profiles one of the characters from the Malaysia picture, a former spy, as he tries to reassimilate into Japanese society. Finally, Karayuki-san, The Making of a Prostitute studies a Japanese woman who temporarily traveled to Malaysia to "service" Japanese military officers, and ended up making the country her permanent home.