SHUJI TERAYAMA-10 Experimental Japanese Movies
Shuji Terayama was an avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director and photographer born in Tokyo in 1935. He was one of the leading artists of the new avant-garde Japanese theatre movement in the 1970s.
Here, we recommended you, 10 of the best Terayama’s surreal and eerie films that are a must-watch for any fan of groundbreaking cinema.
An imaginary world filled with dreams of erotic fantasy and escape.
1.THE CAGE (1962)
Finished shooting in 1962, the movie’s cast was almost the same as its crew. With a bunch of experimental symbols such as skinny human body, clock and goat flow from one scene to another, the film explores the question of whether a man is a prisoner of time.
2. EMPEROR TOMATE KETCHUP (1971)
A young boy is the emperor of a country in which children have overthrown the adults.
3. THROW AWAY YOUR BOOKS (1971)
Conditions have been better for the nameless protagonist: his grandmother is a shoplifter and his war criminal father and sister have an unhealthy, intimate relationship with the family rabbit.
4. PASTORAL: TO DIE IN THE COUNTRY (Hide and Seek) 1974
A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.
5. BUTTERFLY DRESS PLEDGE (1974)
In the heady and extremist Japanese art scene of the late ‘70s, Terayama created a number of unforgettable and highly controversial short films. This is a short movie Terayama’s Experimental Image World.
6. LABYRINTH TALE (1975)
Two men carry a portal door which leads to different realms.
7. THE ERASER (1977)
Visions of characters by the seaside from one’s memory are erased by the filmmaker’s hand.
8. MARUDORO NO UTA (1977)
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.
9. PRIVATE COLECCTIONS (1979)
A film composed of three stories. In the first one, a castaway arrives on a paradise island and finds a half-naked, playful and complacent woman. In the second, a teenager tries to remember the lyrics of a lullaby, which leads to sexual and oedipal fantasies. In the third, a rich man in 19th century Paris hires a prostitute for one night.
10. VIDEO LETTER (1982)
Video Letter is a strange and unsettling film that records a correspondence by videotape between Shuji Terayama and his acquaintance, the famous modern poet, Shuntaro Tanikawa.
