Keiko Niitaka

The documentary to find the "true Shuji Terayama".

В небольшой японской деревушке влюбленные поженились, несмотря на существующие предрассудки о тех, кто вступает в брак, являясь родственниками. По легенде у таких людей может родиться ребенок с хвостом. С этих странных событий и начинается невероятная история…

This is Shuji Terayama memorial performance from 1983.

A girl named O loves a rich, and much older man. She is subjected to a variety of humiliating experiences to prove her unconditional obedience to him in a chinese brothel. A poor boy sees her and falls in love with her. To get the money needed to sleep with her, he takes part in rebellious acts.

Three stories. A solitary sailor falls from his boat and washes ashore on a tropical island. While seeking rescue, he's found by a nearly naked woman who is playful and compliant. He decides to erase his signs of distress and remain on the island. What awaits? In the second, an adolescent searches for the words of a nursery rime he remembers bits of. His journey takes him into dreams, sexual awakening, and Oedipal fantasy. Third, a man of wealth in late-nineteenth century Paris hires a prostitute for the night. She's also cabaret performer and takes him to her room. He fears he's about to be robbed. What's her secret?

Akira is haunted by a "bouncing ball" song that he remembers his mother singing when he was a small child, and now on the verge of a sexually active adulthood, he wants to find the origins of the song. The young man ostensibly wanders into a time-warp in which aspects from his childhood and adulthood mix together. In this never-never land he comes across a beautiful woman/witch who is lost inside the labyrinth of her mansion, just as the young man is lost in the labyrinth of time — and on some levels, perhaps the labyrinth of his subconscious.

Shuji Terayama and J.A.Seazer's phantasmagoric folk-psych-symph-prog-rock opera. Historical Tenjo Sajiki performance from 1978.

Stage performance by the Tenjo Sajiki troupe.

In the midst of a match, a successful boxer - Hayato, has had enough of the sport. He lets himself get knocked, quits boxing, leaving his wife and start living alone with his mangy dog. One day a young mediocre boxer knocks at the door and wants to be Hayatos apprentice.

As a family goes on with their day, the shadows on their walls lead a completely different life.

In this Borgesian satire on knowledge and technology, bibliophilic desire leads to the construction of a pedal-powered reading machine. Resembling a combination of gymnastic contraption, printing press and early cinematic apparatus, the machine’s purpose remains ambiguous. And like this machine, Terayama’s film connects his work in poetry, motion picture and graphic design by weaving together printed and projected, still and moving images.

A “reading film” of delirious image and text, Les chants de Maldoror takes its title and inspiration from Comte de Lautréamont’s 1869 proto-Surrealist poetic novel which, for instance, describes beauty as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table. In the novel’s six cantos, a young misanthrope indulges in depraved and destructive acts. Unexpected encounters abound, with turtles and birds joining Terayama’s regular cast of snails and dogs to wander over books and bare torsos. Feverish video processing posterizes, inverts and overlays images that are further colored by sound—pushing the limits of his literary adaptation. Terayama wrote that the only tombstone he wanted was his words, but, as Les chants de Maldoror demonstrates, words need not be confined to carved monuments or bound hardcopies.

An experimental short featuring people and nails.

The smallpox virus has created its own unique atmosphere in Terayama’s film where the skin of a bandaged adolescent and the surface of the filmic image are subjected to a bizarre ‘disturbance’ as snails cross the screen and nails are hammered into the skull of the ailing patient. Illness in this film is as much a psychic entity as a physical one and manifests itself in an array of theatrical tableaux from grotesque women rigorously brushing their teeth to a snooker game where the players in white face makeup behave like automata. A Tale of Smallpox uses a medical theme to chart the traumatic dream life of Terayama’s times, evincing deep-rooted concerns in the Japanese national psyche that hark back to the upheaval of Meiji modernisation and the devastation of World War Two.

Это откровенная медитация на тему детства и взросления, диалог взрослого режиссера с самим собой в том возрасте, когда ему было 15 лет.

A dreamlike portrayal of a hangover after a decadent party.

В 1928 году в честь восшествия на престол императора Хирохито в Японии была объявлена тотальная амнистия. Сотни опасных головорезов, обреченных по приговору суда гнить в тюремных застенках на протяжении долгих десятилетий, были выпущены на свободу и смогли вернуться в свои родные места. Для одних эта неожиданная свобода стала счастьем, для других — настоящим проклятием. Сэйдзи Ивахаси из клана Энокия получил десять лет за убийство босса клана Канно. Вернувшись после амнистии домой, он обнаруживает, что за время его отсутствия новый босс Канно полностью подмял под себя клан Энокия. Сэйдзи прекрасно понимает, что уже давно не принадлежит этому кругу и его возвращения никто не ждал. Он осознает, что ему нужно побыстрее собирать вещи и ехать в Маньчжурию воплощать свои мечты о мирной жизни. Но честь не позволяет Сэйдзи сделать это.

История японского подростка из неблагополучной семьи. Его бабушка страдает старческим маразмом, сестра любит своего кролика на грани сексуальной одержимости, а отец отводит юношу к проститутке, чтобы тот стал мужчиной. Пережив множество тяжелых жизненных ситуаций юноша разочаровывается в людях и собственной жизни. От ярости он сбегает из дома и оказывается на улице. Главная история фильма разбивается короткими рассказами различных людей, которые помогают сложить цельную картину явлений в обществе Японии в 60-70-е годы.

In a Japanese colony, children overthrow their parental guardians and attempt to form a new society. Their plan spirals out of control and they are soon lost in a web of sexual deviation and violence.

Pinku from 1967.

Pinku from 1965.

A doctor, gynecologist, discover the corpse of his wife. His nurse advises to him to declare her death a simple heart attack, to clear himself without the slightest doubt. He refuses and calls the police force there. The interrogation of the doctor, then other witnesses, slowly reveals the truth of her demise…