Masao Adachi

Masao Adachi's first new film in six years that secretly started filming at the end of August. About the life of Tetsuya Yamagami, suspected assassin of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Masao Adachi's first new film in six years that secretly started filming at the end of August. About the life of Tetsuya Yamagami, suspected assassin of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Yasuo (Hiroshi Abe) grew up as an orphan. He married a woman he loved and they had a son Akira (later played by Takumi Kitamura). Yasuo's life seemed great at the time, but his life totally changed after his wife died in accident. Since that time, Yasuo, who never experienced parents' love himself, has to raise his son Akira alone.

Masao Adachi, the author and director of experimental works and pinku-eiga in the 1960s, was a member of the Japanese New Left that shifted from being a filmmaker to a guerrilla fighter. In 1974, he joined the Japanese Red Army in Lebanon, which worked closely with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck met Adachi in Tokyo in 2018 and talked with him about a wide range of topics, including art, revolution, the influence of western avant-garde art and American underground; the Japanese Red Army; collaboration with secret services; the role of the Left after 1968; and the reasons for failures of leftist ideas and strategies.

Questioning the meaning of people's lives, the multiple stories include the work of a manga artist, old men get involved in a fight and a murder, a bus incident which affects those who survive it, fishing, cherry-blossom viewing and more

A wordless man stages an unexplained hunger strike and the people surrounding him exploit his silence to further their own cause...

A wordless man stages an unexplained hunger strike and the people surrounding him exploit his silence to further their own cause...

A wordless man stages an unexplained hunger strike and the people surrounding him exploit his silence to further their own cause...

Adashi, ex-member of the Japanese Red Army, narrates a story taking place in Beirut. The melancholy of war, the pain of disillusionment. A story being written and rewritten, open to interpretation. When the time comes, return to reality can only be cruel.

Inspired by the student revolutions of 1968, two women in Germany and Japan set out to plot world revolution as leaders of the Baader Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army. What were they fighting for and what have we learned?

A film on exile, revolution, landscapes and memory, Anabasis brings forth the remarkable parallel stories of Adachi and May, one a filmmaker who gave up images, the other a young woman whose identity-less existence forbade keeping images of her own life. Fittingly returning the image to their lives, director Eric Baudelaire places Adachi and May’s revelatory voiceover reminiscences against warm, fragile Super-8mm footage of their split milieus, Tokyo and Beirut. Grounding their wide-ranging reflections in a solid yet complex reality, Anabasis provides a richly rewarding look at a fascinating, now nearly forgotten era (in politics and cinema), reminding us of film’s own ability to portray—and influence—its landscape.

The first in a planned series of films about radical filmmakers by film critic Nicole Brenez and filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux, It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve is a portrait of Masao Adachi, who emerged during the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s as a screenwriter for Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu, and directed a series of avant-garde films that grafted radical politics to the sexploitation genre. A 1971 visit to a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) training camp while on the way back from Cannes resulted in Adachi's most infamous film, the agit-prop documentary Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War, which he co-directed with Wakamatsu. Soon after, Adachi joined a splinter cell of the Japanese Red Army in Lebanon, where he stayed from 1974 until he was deported to Japan in 1997 to serve time for passport violations.

A young man named Carlos with a sexual trauma kidnaps a girl that works with him. During the kidnapping the sexual tension and the violence will make the two of them change their point views on life and politics.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, in 1940, Lieutenant Kurokawa returns home as a honored and decorated soldier but deprived of his arms and legs lost in battle. All hopes, from the villagers and women to close family members, turn to Shigeko, the Lieutenant's wife. She must honor the Emperor and the country in setting an example for all by fulfilling her duty and taking care of the 'god soldier'. Kurokawa prior to leaving to fight in the war regularly beat and berated his wife for her barrenness and inability to bring him a son. When he returns home as an amputee with no hearing and no speech, his wife dutifully attends to him, even though he shows little appreciation for her dedicated care. His main concerns are getting fed and getting sex. Even in his own degraded condition, he manages to berate his wife. Eventually, though, his own memories infiltrate and he is haunted by his horrible, sadistic deeds, performed while in the duty of the Japanese military.

During a suicide attack on an airport, the hand grenade of 'M', one of three terrorists, malfunctions, leaving him captured. Exposed to maltreatment in prison, he slowly loses his grip on reality as he is forced to confront his ideological convictions.

During a suicide attack on an airport, the hand grenade of 'M', one of three terrorists, malfunctions, leaving him captured. Exposed to maltreatment in prison, he slowly loses his grip on reality as he is forced to confront his ideological convictions.

Making-of documentary for Masao Adachi's "Prisoner/Terrorist"

A Japanese teenager bicycles aimlessly through the countryside after killing his mother.

Documentary filmmaker Kenjiro Fujii takes a look at the history of a distinctly Japanese brand of softcore pornography in this extensive examination of the "pinku eiga" genre (ピンク映画 Pinku eiga or Pinkeiga). For more than 40 years, so-called "pink" films have served as both a key source of revenue for the Japanese film industry as well as a launching pad for the careers of such mainstream filmmakers as Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After providing a detailed history of the still-profitable and popular genre through interviews with a variety of behind-the-scenes players and clips from such classic pink films as Fish Bait Boobies, director Fujii shifts his focus to the production of an upcoming pink film to offer a glimpse into the creative and stylistic evolution of the genre.

Fumiya owes 5 million yen to a female load shark for a gambling debt, while having affair an with Mrs. Hosoi who offers him 5 million to murder her husband. Fumiya has no choice but to kill Mr. Hosoi. Unfortunately he's see by a neighbor. In the escape, he meets a girl named Akiko. He hides in her house. Later on, Fumiya and Akiko fall in love and have sex. After that, he finds that the house owner Shin kidnapped Akiko whem she was a little girl and has kept her in the house for over a decade. Fumiya is determined to take her away from Shin's brutal confinement. A battle of wills between jailer, prisoner and accidental savior begins….

A documentary on sixties counterculture in Japan featuring Donald Richie, Tadanori Yokoo, Masao Adachi, Koji Wakamatsu, Toshio Matsumoto and Akaji Maro among others.

Biopic about jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe (Ko Machida) and his wife, noted writer Izumi Suzuki (Reona Hirota).

A chubby, bicycle-riding rapist/killer dispatches 13 people in a cold, bloody, detached rampage.

AKA Serial Killer documents the social upheaval and political oppression that roiled Japan in the 1960s, profiling a nineteen-year-old serial killer Norio Nagayama. An indictment of media sensationalism, the film humanizes the young man by situating his crimes in the larger context of his environment.

AKA Serial Killer documents the social upheaval and political oppression that roiled Japan in the 1960s, profiling a nineteen-year-old serial killer Norio Nagayama. An indictment of media sensationalism, the film humanizes the young man by situating his crimes in the larger context of his environment.

AKA Serial Killer documents the social upheaval and political oppression that roiled Japan in the 1960s, profiling a nineteen-year-old serial killer Norio Nagayama. An indictment of media sensationalism, the film humanizes the young man by situating his crimes in the larger context of his environment.

AKA Serial Killer documents the social upheaval and political oppression that roiled Japan in the 1960s, profiling a nineteen-year-old serial killer Norio Nagayama. An indictment of media sensationalism, the film humanizes the young man by situating his crimes in the larger context of his environment.

A banker and a high school girl start a brothel in the snowy countryside of Hokuriko.

Based on the comic by Kazuo Koike

Pinku from 1972.

A militant revolutionary group is torn apart by betrayal as its members descend into paranoia and sexual decadence.

A militant revolutionary group is torn apart by betrayal as its members descend into paranoia and sexual decadence.

A critique of the ideal Japanese family, here seen as militaristic, absurdly incestuous and patriarchal. And only nihilistic destruction by the young ones seems to be the only way out.

Adachi and Wakamatsu went to Beirut on the way back from the Cannes Film Festival. There, in collaboration with the Red Army members and PFLP, they produced this newsreel film depicting the everyday activities of Arab guerrillas as a cinematic narrative on the world revolution.

Adachi and Wakamatsu went to Beirut on the way back from the Cannes Film Festival. There, in collaboration with the Red Army members and PFLP, they produced this newsreel film depicting the everyday activities of Arab guerrillas as a cinematic narrative on the world revolution.

Adachi and Wakamatsu went to Beirut on the way back from the Cannes Film Festival. There, in collaboration with the Red Army members and PFLP, they produced this newsreel film depicting the everyday activities of Arab guerrillas as a cinematic narrative on the world revolution.

Desensitized and dissatisfied, a young yet jaded sexual veteran sets out on a journey of self-discovery while teetering on the threshold of womanhood. Yasuko is taking part in an orgy when she realizes that she has lost all feeling - not just physically, but emotionally as well. Now, with the weight of responsibility and adult expectation weighing down on her shoulders, Yasuko attempts to better understand how she could be so empty at such a tender age.

Desensitized and dissatisfied, a young yet jaded sexual veteran sets out on a journey of self-discovery while teetering on the threshold of womanhood. Yasuko is taking part in an orgy when she realizes that she has lost all feeling - not just physically, but emotionally as well. Now, with the weight of responsibility and adult expectation weighing down on her shoulders, Yasuko attempts to better understand how she could be so empty at such a tender age.

Pinku from 1971

A woman who has just missed her suicide and a couple which has just left its political movement meet on a beach...

A woman who has just missed her suicide and a couple which has just left its political movement meet on a beach...

In the Edo era, two man arrive in a village and engage in criminal activity. While one of them becomes successful and rich, the other gets betrayed and ends up in prison, burning for revenge. The truth changes with the viewpoint in this Wakamatsu film, which has inspired comparisons to Rashomon.

The manager of a supermarket is flooded with huge financial problems. Driven by desperation, she commits a series of murders.

The manager of a supermarket is flooded with huge financial problems. Driven by desperation, she commits a series of murders.

Mishima has just committed suicide. Two couples meet by accident at an inn in the countryside, the man and the woman, now, each with a new partner, who knew each other already for ten years...

A salesman is looking in the city of Tokyo for his lost son. But he becomes increasingly angry at the young and radical hippies, who are not the least helpful.

A faction of the Communist Party puts Tokyo rocked by demonstrations that they start. Despite this marked the inner circle of more uncertainty and group sex than determination and morale. When the police forcing them to go underground, and the mysterious Suzuki joins, starts the internal tensions in the group take over.

A girl becomes a pawn in the game between two rival gangs gangster.

Three high school girls about to take their final exam, secretly plan to ruin the diploma ceremony in order to avenge themselves of that school which treated them as delinquents. Two classmates who discovered their plan decide to join the rebellion. They steal all the graduation certificates, use their charms to get weapons from Jieitai soldiers and establish their base in the mountain.

Three high school girls about to take their final exam, secretly plan to ruin the diploma ceremony in order to avenge themselves of that school which treated them as delinquents. Two classmates who discovered their plan decide to join the rebellion. They steal all the graduation certificates, use their charms to get weapons from Jieitai soldiers and establish their base in the mountain.

During clashes between demonstrators and police that rage on the streets of Tokyo, a young man hides in the house of his brother - a police officer. The latter is accidentally shot by his wife, which forces the young man to flee with her.

During clashes between demonstrators and police that rage on the streets of Tokyo, a young man hides in the house of his brother - a police officer. The latter is accidentally shot by his wife, which forces the young man to flee with her.

A masterpiece of militant cinema of 1968, filmed on the actual barricades of Adachi's very own Nihon University during the period of social struggles. The film begins in a lengthy free-love session taking the form of a 'play' rape being enacted by a group of aimless, listless and political apathetic students. The subtext intended by Adachi informs the rest of the film – that there is a world of difference between direct action politics, and merely talking the talk.

A masterpiece of militant cinema of 1968, filmed on the actual barricades of Adachi's very own Nihon University during the period of social struggles. The film begins in a lengthy free-love session taking the form of a 'play' rape being enacted by a group of aimless, listless and political apathetic students. The subtext intended by Adachi informs the rest of the film – that there is a world of difference between direct action politics, and merely talking the talk.

This is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdy, who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.

A brother and sister live as outcasts from their hamlet due to a belief that mental illness runs in their family. A group of villagers plot to steal their property by beating and hanging the brother and gang-raping the sister. Believing the brother to be dead, scheming to kill the sister, and making both deaths look like accidents... unbeknownst to them, the brother survives and proceeds on a mission to slaughter those responsible in the hamlet.

A bunch of young hipsters kidnaps a loving couple and keeps them trapped in a barren landscape. To the sounds of free jazz they are performing various experiments with the couple. In the distance is a yakuza gang keeping track of the youths. Who are really experimenting with whom?

After being sexually assaulted on a rooftop, seventeen year old Poppo meets a mysterious boy, and swap their traumas and fears, with fatal consequences.

Inspired by the true story of a Geisha murdered in a city famous for its baths, Adachi forged here his favorite style, a kind of conceptual documentary recounting the incident in monotone. The same event that at the beginning of Violated Angels escaped every principle of causality, is portrayed here as a singular anti-spectacle.

Inspired by the true story of a Geisha murdered in a city famous for its baths, Adachi forged here his favorite style, a kind of conceptual documentary recounting the incident in monotone. The same event that at the beginning of Violated Angels escaped every principle of causality, is portrayed here as a singular anti-spectacle.

Shirō raids the office of the organization that attacked his lover, wreaking havoc and escaping with a stolen handgun. In retaliation, the organization hires two killers to get rid of Shirō. The duo begin to develop a strange kinship with their target...

Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.

Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.

Pinku from 1968

A wife with a fertility problem wants to use her sister's womb to have children, but her sister is enjoying her boyfriend and sexual freedom. The husband is a commanding chauvinist and this soon turns out to be an uninteresting study on authority, patriarchy and conservatism vs. free love and youth culture.

Young slacker couple accidentially kills a friend. They burn his body and hang out on a beach.

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

Study about a young disturbed man, who rapes and kills women and collects their bodies in a cave. A work based on the case of Yoshio Kodaira, a serial rape murder case shortly after the war.

A man leaves his family in Tokyo to travel and engage in various sexual escapades. When he returns home he finds out that his wife is starring in Imamura’s documentary about her search for her missing husband.

Mixing memory and dreams, this film centers on a man who becomes lost within the Möbius strip of his own consciousness.

Mixing memory and dreams, this film centers on a man who becomes lost within the Möbius strip of his own consciousness.

Mixing memory and dreams, this film centers on a man who becomes lost within the Möbius strip of his own consciousness.

A detective investigating a serial rapist discovers that he and the perpetrator come from the same lineage of depraved individuals, a genealogy of violent and sexually perverse deviants that stretches through the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras and can even be traced back to the Edo era.

A detective investigating a serial rapist discovers that he and the perpetrator come from the same lineage of depraved individuals, a genealogy of violent and sexually perverse deviants that stretches through the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras and can even be traced back to the Edo era.

A violently erotic drama taking place in a fishing village.

A young man breaks into a nurse's rooming house and one-by-one kills off nurses.

The insane gynecologist, Dr. Marukido Sadao (Marquis de Sade), theorizes that a woman is unable to become pregnant if she is writhing in intense pain during intercourse. He sets about testing this new method of birth control by torturing women during sex.

The insane gynecologist, Dr. Marukido Sadao (Marquis de Sade), theorizes that a woman is unable to become pregnant if she is writhing in intense pain during intercourse. He sets about testing this new method of birth control by torturing women during sex.

A hitman focuses on his job hoping to retire quickly and richly. But the betrayal of his clan and those he loves endangers his plan.

A press photographer returns to Japan from the war in Vietnam after losing his friend and fellow photographer on the battlefield.

A press photographer returns to Japan from the war in Vietnam after losing his friend and fellow photographer on the battlefield.

A gynecologist attempts to rid the world of sexual problems by separating sex on the one hand and reproduction, which he feels should be left to artificial wombs.

A gynecologist attempts to rid the world of sexual problems by separating sex on the one hand and reproduction, which he feels should be left to artificial wombs.

A gynecologist attempts to rid the world of sexual problems by separating sex on the one hand and reproduction, which he feels should be left to artificial wombs.

A gynecologist attempts to rid the world of sexual problems by separating sex on the one hand and reproduction, which he feels should be left to artificial wombs.

A man keeps his girlfriend tied up in his small apartment and tortures her. She is undressed, subjected to various types of bondage, whipped, and tortured with a razor blade.

A man keeps his girlfriend tied up in his small apartment and tortures her. She is undressed, subjected to various types of bondage, whipped, and tortured with a razor blade.

In this bizarre world of distorted human pleasures, we have come to accept the most heinous crimes against mankind as just another example of the degeneration of our species. Even the most jaded individual could not forgive the creators of the Love Robots. Love Robots are beautiful young girls, abducted right off the street who, through a procedure that rivals anything the Marquis de Sade might have dreamt of, are turned into monsters, capable of killing a man or loving him on command.

Pinku from 1966

A high school student preparing for his university entrance exams is discontent with various social inequities and is determined to take vengeance on all adults.

Hi-Red Centre were comprised of Genpei Akasegawa, Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Jiro Takamatsu, who enacted ‘happening’-style performance art in unusual spaces during the early 1960s in Japan. The film is an extremely rare document of one of their early events, where they hired out a room in the Imperial Hotel and invited many friends and professionals in the art scene to participate in the occasion. The performance parodies Cold War fears and the construction of private bomb-shelters, as they diligently measure each guest’s weight and proportions in pretence that they are to build human-size shelters for each individual. Key figures of the art scene make an appearance, including Yoko Ono, video-artist Nam June Paik, noise artist Yasunao Tone, filmmaker Masao Adachi and graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo. A rarely seen and exceptional insight into the Japanese art scene of the era, Jonouchi records the event in his characteristically erratic style.

Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive

Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive

Overripe with psychosexual poetry and stark, oneiric rituals, Adachi's filmmaking debut, made while he was still an undergraduate, counts among the more resonant accomplishments of the now famous Nihon University Film Club. Adachi's obvious fascination with the wide-eyed watchfulness of childhood and the uncanny is an expression of the important surrealist strand running throughout the post-WWII Japanese avant-garde. - Harvard Film Archive