RYAKUSHO RENZOKU SHASATSUMA
(“Abbreviation: Demon Gun-Killer”)
Production: Japan, 1969
Director: Masao Adachi, Mamoru Sasaki & Masao Matsuda
Category: Experimental/Political/True Crime
Produced by Koji Wakamatsu, Adachi’s film is a true underground classic, recreating the voyage across Japan of Norio Nagayama, a real-life, 19-year-old killer who murdered four victims by gunshot in late 1968. With scant dialogue, the experience evokes fukei-ron, a “theory of landscape” which actually impacted on many other fields of art: unchanging landscape as a physical embodiment of state oppression. Adachi was a key figure in the Tokyo 60s underground; his film Sain (“Vaginal Occlusion”, 1963) was the first to be screened at the legendary “Night Road Show” sessions at Shinjuku Bunkamura, home of revolutionary cinema, as part of an event titled Sain No Gi (“Ritual Of Vaginal Occlusion”). His later Gingakei (“Galaxy”, 1967) was the first film screened at that venue’s notorious Scorpion Theatre. In 1971, Adachi and Wakamatsu absconded to Palestine, producing the short revolutionary film Sekigun PFLP Sekai Senso Sengen (“Red Army PFLP: Declaration Of World War”).
Posted by Lady Belladonna