 |
| Masao Adachi |
“Instead of replacing the camera with
the rifle, why not have one in each hand?” – Masao Adachi
Born in 1939 in Fukoka, Japan, Masao
Adachi was one of the preeminent figures in revolutionary cinema
during the 1960s/1970s. He was a close collaborator of filmmaker Koji
Wakamatsu, and both had the same photographer director, the legendary
Hideo Ito. Masao Adachi provided the scripts for such masterpieces of
Wakamatsu as The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966) and Violated Angels
(1967).
After directing his own movies, dealing
with left-wing political themes and sex, quite often mixed together,
Adachi left cinema for revolution, joining the Japanese Red Army to
organize terror attack. But the reason we remember Adachi here at
Complete Communion is one film, titled AKA Serial Killer, we saw
yesterday night for the first time, even if the movie was released in
1969.
 |
| Masahiko Togashi - Mototeru Takagi "Isolation" |
AKA Serial Killer was the film that
defined the 'landscape theory' for which he is credited as one of the
founders, but that has many followers in Europe – the most famous
are Jean Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet: it is a radical Marxist
theory stating that the landscape is a pure expression of the
dominand political power. In showing the landscape, we show different
degrees of alienation.
To demonstrate this theory, Adachi
focuses on the story of Norio Nagayama, a 19 year old boy convicted
for the murders of four people in four different Japanese cities.
Adachi narrates with his own voice the life of Nagayama, while the
images show landscapes of the places in which the killer lived.
This way, the movie is an act of
accusation of the alienation that forced Nagayama to become an
assassin. To help this, the movie is provided of a beautiful, sharp
soundtrack of free jazz. The musicians involved are Masahiko Togashi
(drums, vibraphone, marimba, timpani, percussions) and Mototeru
Takagi (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet).
The music from the movie was collected
in 1969 in a record titled Isolation (Take One Records), reissued in
2000 by Columbia and in 2005 by Bridge. There's lot of space in it, a
meditative atmosphere broken by the saxophones and their cries. But
it's the mix of images and music in the film by Adachi that creates a
fascinating documentary of an era, an era in which the arts were all
at the service of the revolution, of social change, and it is this
era that we want to celebrate with this post, inviting all of you to
enjoy both the music and the movie.
