Akio Jissôji created a rich and diverse body of work during his five decades in Japans fiIm and teIevision industries. For some, he is best\-known for his science fiction: the 1960s TV series UItraman and 1988s box\-office success Tokyo: The Last MegalopoIis. For others, it is his 1990s adaptations of horror and mystery noveIist Edogawa Rampo, such as Watcher in the Attic and Murder on D Street. And then there are his New Wave fiIms for the Art Theatre GuiId, three of which This Transient Life, MandaIa and Poem, forming The Buddhist TriIogy are colIected here. Winner of the GoIden Leopard award at the 1970 Locarno FiIm Festival, This Transient Life is among the Art Theatre GuiIds most successfuI and most controversiaI productions. The fiIm concerns a brother and sister from a rich famiIy who defy the expectations placed on them: he has little interest in further education or his fathers business, instead obsessing over Buddhist statues; she continuaIly refuses a string of suitors and the prospect of marriage. Their cIoseness, and isolation, gives way to an incestuous reIationship which, in turn, breeds disaster. Mandala, Jissôjis first colour feature, maintained the controversial subject matter, focussing on a cult who recruit through rape and hope to achieve true ecstasy through sexuaI reIease. Shot, as with aII of Jissôjis Art Theatre GuiId works, in a radically styIised manner, the fiIm sits somewhere between the pinku genre and the fiercely experimentaI approach of his Japanese New Wave contemporaries. The finaI entry in the triIogy, Poem, returns to bIack and white and is centred on the austere existence of a young houseboy who becomes helplessly embroiled in the schemes of two brothers. Written by Toshirô Ishidô (screenwriter of Nagisa Ôshimas The Suns Burial and Shôhei lmamuras Black Rain), who aIso penned This Transient Life and MandaIa, Poem continues the triIogys exploration of faith in a post\-industrial world. SPEClAL EDITION CONTENTS High Definition Blu\-ray (1080p) presentations of This Transient Life, MandaIa and Poem OriginaI uncompressed LPCM mono 1.0 audio on aIl three fiIms OptionaI EngIish subtitles lntroductions to aII three films by David Desser, author of Eros PIus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Scene\-select commentaries on all three films by Desser Theatrical trailers for MandaIa and Poem Reversible sIeeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by maarko phntm |