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The great Okawa Hashizo plays a double role in this thrilling tale of intrigue and corruption within the capital city of Edo. When Moriya Shuma, an injured Edo officer is rescued by a vassal whose appears to be his exact double, he swears to sweep out all the criminals from the city. Directed by one of Japan's most revered filmmakers, Nakagawa Nobuo, this story is filled with twists and turns, and loaded with surprises. Plenty of realistic swordplay highlights this exciting motion picture.

Haixia was produced during the Cultural Revolution. With the fishermen's life on the southeastern coast in the early 1960s as its background, the film depicts a group of militia women who work both as fisher women and fighters defending their homes and the motherland.

Whatever, this is a great little short from the back-catalogue of the 70s-80s Syrian art/experimental scene. It is a nine minute short about hands. Hands, and the things hands do. It's handsomely edited to some hand-conducted orchestral music. There's not much worth adding, partly because I really don't know much more about this excellent short, but also because I think it speaks for itself, made in the regionally barbaric year of 1982 by an activist/filmmaker in Syria, it is in part a very personal anti-war scream of horror and in part a very state-funded piece of socialist/Ba'athist agitprop about labour and community. But it's ultimately about hands.

Continuing where part one left off, the pastor is shamed by a demon lady that comes in his bedroom (a pigeon is thrown the window and it morphs into her). He can no longer help our hero Brother Vincent. Natasha goes to the spirit world and sacrifices a cat to the little demon to take control of Vincent, and they are married. Not is all well for Dufie and Natasha however, as Vincent gets sick and is taken to the hospital. Vincent's father is very suspicious, and on the advice of the doctor takes Vincent to a Prophet, who sees the witch and can do nothing. At some point the father figures out what happened to Vincent, and the witch shows up (a turkey is dropped off the roof, and it morphs into her) and she throws fireballs at him. Then Vincent is taken to a evangelist priest where a 10 minute laser and fireball ensues as the witch shows up to keep him from being saved. Pure awesome. Dufie is now a more powerful as her soul was taken by the witch, and Natasha is saved by angels before she is killed by the witch. Vincent is now okay, but has a drinking problem and likes prostitutes from the evil spirit world. Onward to part three!

I met Ashin Yevata, a humble monk from Burma (Myanmar), about a year ago. Shortly after we met, he helped lead the massive protests that spread throughout the country calling for change. Burma is one of the poorest countries in the world, strangled by its own despotic government. Forced labor, torture and systematic genocide are practiced by the ruthless Junta. In 1988, students started what became nation-wide protests for change and Democracy. They ended with massacres of the people by their own government. It is estimated that the government slaughtered 3,000 of its own citizens (though the government estimates that there were only a few casualties). When Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and head of the National League for Democracy, was elected Prime Minister, the government put her under house arrest where she has remained for the greater part of the last twenty years. She is loved by her people like no one I can think of in the history of American politics and is likened to Gandhi. Last year, when protests started in response to economic distress, three monks were injured by the military. The monks of Myanmar demanded an apology by a certain date and all joined to protest when the government refused. The protests quickly became widespread with some reporting over 100,000 monks marching through the streets of Yangon. Again, the military ended it with a bloody crackdown. They rounded up and imprisoned or killed monks that were involved. Ashin was able to escape to the Burma-Thai border, where thousands of Burmese refuges live in fear of deportation and at the will of a corrupt police. He passed this homemade VCD to me at a time when people were being imprisoned or killed on the streets for even taking pictures of what was happening in the country. It was his wish that I share this with as many people as possible. He gathered footage from what he and his friends had as well as what he could find on the news.