Winner of the Best Art Direction award from the Japanese Academy, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1979 classic Demon Pond (original Japanese tite: Yashagaike) follows a Tokyo academic that stumbles into a remote village who share a strange ritual: every day, the locals ring a bell to prevent a mythical dragon from rising from the nearby pond and flooding the region. What begins as eccentricity becomes uncanny, as the boundaries between folklore and madness begin to blur.

Adapted from Kyōka Izumi’s 1913 play and reimagined with a theatrical, dreamlike visual language by New Wave master Masahiro Shinoda, this is a ghost story told in the language of myth and ritual. Part parable, part fever dream, Demon Pond is less about monsters and more about what it means to believe—and what it costs to stop.

Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema is a curated 12-film trip through the evolution of Japan—from the quiet post-war resilience of the 1940s all the way to the radical reinventions of the 1990s. Each Monday this July-September, we will explore a new facet of this incredible nation’s cinematic journey throughout the 20th century. All films will be presented in their original Japanese language with English subtitles, at a reduced ticket price of $8.