Japanese ecommerce outfit Info Avenue Corp has raised finance for a second production - Shohei Imamura's Lukewarm Water Under The Red Bridge (Akai Hashi No Shita No Nurui Mizu) - through its on-line financing scheme.

Info Avenue recruits film fans through a web-site as paying members of "support groups" for individual films. The "supporters" purchase memberships, ranging from Y5,000-Y100,000, in return for various benefits, including access to a dedicated web-site at which they can receive production updates, email the director and sign up as extras. The membership fees are then transferred to the production company.

Lukewarm stars Koji Yakusho as a homeless man who travels to a remote village to dig up buried treasure, but finds the love of his life instead. Production started on October 18 and will continue to the end of December. In addition to Info Avenue, the film is being produced by Nikkatsu, Imamura Production and Bapp.

The first film to be produced using Info Avenue's Cine m@ney.com scheme was Takashi Miike's The Men Who Fell From Heaven (Tengoku Kara Kita Otokotachi), which will premiere at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival.