DOMAN SEMAN (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Go Shibata
Starring: Motako Ishii, Takeshi Yamamoto, Yusuke Noguchi, with a cameo appearance by LATE BLOOMER star Masakiyo Sumida

In 2004, Go Shibata unleashed LATE BLOOMER, the result of his five year collaboration with actor, Sumida Masakiyo, who suffers from cerebral palsy. The movie cast Sumida as a disabled serial killer and although a battle with its distributor kept it off the market for three years, when it was finally released in Japan it became an unexpected cult hit. Now Shibata is back and this time he doesn't just want to make a cult hit, he wants to make an actual cult, a Magikal Mystery Cult of the Grand Working that seeks to do nothing less than reverse the apocalypse.

The Apocalypse is in full effect with human souls being destroyed by greed, the global economic crisis and the Human Enslavement Project, run by an evil geisha (in a rubber Halloween mask) who encourages gangs of Hot Boys to beat up the homeless while cruising around in her luxury hearse. DOMAN SEMAN's alternate title is Horikawa Nakatachiuri, the spiritual nexus where Horikawa River intersects with Nakatachiuri Street at the Modori Bashi Bridge, forming a psychogeographic hot spot that's the lair of Mr. Abe, a supernatural yakuza magician who leads an army of psychic children who are weaponizing Kyoto with mystical amulets made of garbage. Enter Shinsuke, a deadbeat who supports himself by mooching off his girlfriend, and Tsutomu, a homeless bum constantly tripping on Day Glo Imperial Mushrooms. Forcibly conscripted by Mr. Abe, they're forced to monitor the whereabouts of Terada, an adult who slaughtered the staff of a personal loan company when he was 16 years old and who has grown into a lightning rod for dark mystical energies.

The spirit of Aleister Crowley and Richard Lester hover over the proceedings which are less a movie and more an occult working scored to an unholy blend of ska and thrash metal. Completely impenetrable, DOMAN SEMAN is likely to cause fist fights in the theater but it works because Shibata weaves driving music, insane images, a bizarre personal cosmology and his passionate opposition to the dehumanizing of the future into one unstoppable whole. It's nothing less than an elaborate cinematic exorcism whose goal is to purge the demons of the 20th Century from our souls