The Director: Hayao Miyazaki was born in 1941, his father was a director of Miyazaki Airplane. This has been suggested as the foremost influence on the young Miyazaki and his subsequent well known love of flight within film. No other director in the history of cinema has ever exploited the swooping majesty of flight like the great Japanese animator, it is interesting to consider what profound influence both World War II and this love of aeroplane’s had on his resultant career.

Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) is easily the best animated feature film of the last decade. Miyazaki drops us into a world we don't understand and lets us work out the rules of this world as we go along.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson. Additional writing by Wilson McLachlan. Quotations read by Lara Bradban.

Thailand may not have the same weight behind its cinematic output as Japan, Hong Kong, or more recently South Korea, but this is something that director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang is looking to correct. Thai cinema has a long history of filmmaking but by 1997 it was only producing 10 Studio films per year, however a number of directors coalesced in Thailand to change this.

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang may have employed parts of his team from Hong Kong and Japan, but this is most assuredly a Thai film in every way that counts.

Around a half dozen passengers travel on a public bus in rural Japan, a young man in a suit gets aboard. Clearly distressed and restless the man prompts our suspicions but none of the passengers around him. He takes passengers of the bus hostage and kills several of them, his motives are unclear but his misanthropic attitude is deadly and direct. The police arrive and surround the bus; snipers are primed and ready to kill the hostage taker as soon as an opportunity arises.

Shinji Aoyama's visually stunning three and a half hour meditation on the nature of trauma. One the finest Japanese films of the decade.

Completely overlooked in the pantheon of Japanese film makers such as Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, or Kenji Mizoguchi. Masahiro Shinoda directed some thirty-two films from 1960 to as recently as 2003. All of which are obscure, most of which are unavailable for western audiences, few of his films are available on DVD, and only Silence is available on Region 2 DVD. Whether Silence is his only masterpiece remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain – masterpiece it most certainly is.

Masahiro Shinoda should be as highly regarded as the 1950's Japanese greats if this 1971 masterpiece is anything to go by. Soon to be remade my Martin Scorsese, this exploration of religious devotion under the most unbearable circumstances makes for compelling if disturbing viewing.

Takeshi Kitano's 2002 meditation on unconditional devotion - boasting a multi-stranded narrative, slow pace, and the absence of Kitano as performer. This is one of Kitano's finest films and a clear member of the Japanese Avant Garde.

The work of Takeshi Kitano is renowned for being overtly violent, vicious, and cruel at times. Some of his best films like Hanna-bi and Brother have extremely high body counts and use violence as an artistic tool rather than a means to secure higher audience figures. But Dolls is a very clear exception to Kitano’s film making trademarks, it is not particularly violent (although Kitano does still manage to include a brief Yakuza shoot-out even if it is off screen).