Dolls Bearers of Dreams
The Japanese fascination with dolls extends through Neolithic clay figures to Girls' Day festival dolls, puppets and now cartoon character figurines as well. The dolls embody diverse local traditions and beliefs, serving as prayers for good health and rich harvests, or for the repose of the dead, as expressions of awe and respect for the deities, and as toys or ideal figures. The Girls' Day festival dolls represent the Emperor's court gathered for a wedding in Kyoto. This nationwide custom is a prayer for the healthy growth of girl children. In puppet theater, Bunraku and Ningyou-joruri flourished in Osaka during the Edo Period, which lasted from the 17th to the mid-19th century. The puppets express all the subtlety and feelings of real human beings and it takes years of practice to master the puppetry techniques. What do dolls mean to the Japanese people? We look back over this fond, beautiful and extraordinary history.
Trailer
Recently Updated Shows
Bookish
London, 1946 is the dynamic, dangerous and chaotic setting for this stylish new detective drama, with the eccentric Gabriel Book at the very heart of the story: a self-appointed consultant detective to the local police. The thousands of books that line the shelves of his shop provide him with all the knowledge he needs.
Book has gathered around him a host of lovable, damaged misfits whom he informally protects, cajoles, and mentors. His wife Trottie runs the wallpaper shop next door. She's a charismatic adventuress whom Book loves deeply but not physically, for they are in a 'lavender' marriage to help conceal Book's sexual orientation in a time when it was illegal to be gay.
Bookish marries post-war nostalgia with the reckless and life-affirming atmosphere of the times, creating a fast-paced and stylish detective drama.
Æon Flux
Credited for laying the groundwork as one of the first anime female superheroes, Æon Flux returns as a reimagined live-action series. Set in a post-apocalyptic near future where countries no longer exist, reduced to Spartan like city-states locked in perpetual war, where children are turned into lethal soldiers and every citizen carries a gun, one young woman rises up to rebel against her Orwellian government as she becomes the hero known as Æon Flux.
Stranger Things
When a young boy vanishes, a small town uncovers a mystery involving secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one strange little girl.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Outlander: Blood of My Blood explores the lives and relationship of Claire's parents, Julia Moriston and Henry Beauchamp, and Jamie's parents, Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser. The series centers on these two parallel love stories set in two different time periods, with Jamie's parents in the early 18th-century Scottish Highlands and Claire's parents in WWI England.