Ecstacy of the Angels (Koji, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm
The Japanese Art Theatre Guild's 50th anniversary is being celebrated in a retrospective at BFI Southbank. Here is an excellent article from Sight & Sound on underground cinema in the country during the 60s and 70s.
BFI introduction: Extreme-left politics and sex collide in Art Theatre Guild of Japan's most controversial feature, where pink cinema's enfants terribles Wakamatsu Koji and Adachi Masao depict Tokyo as a bomb-zone at the boiling point of social agitation. Intimately linked with real-life activism, actual revolutionaries participated in production and the film pierced the zeitgeist by anticipating the bombing of police stations. Riveting intensity blackens the screen in a tale of betrayal and paranoia between extremist organisations.
Here is an extract.
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