In this intensely intimate documentary, filmmaker Kazuo Hara offers a portrait of a complex, strong-willed woman named Takeda Miyuki--his former lover. A feminist in 1970s Japan, Miyuki is a maverick in a rigid society driven by convention and tradition. As much a participant in this film as he is the filmmaker, Hara follows Miyuki to Okinawa and documents her uncommon life as his feelings unravel in front of the camera.
As Hara himself confessed, "I am not the type of director to shoot something just happening...but rather I like to make something happen and then shoot it." With its grainy black and white scenes and its out-of-synch sound, EXTREME PRIVATE EROS LOVE SONG 1974 creates the illusion of a home movie, but its achingly intimate subject pushed the bounds of the personal documentary to become a landmark in Japanese documentary.
An authentic visionary of cinema, Japanese filmmaker Hara Kazuo has spent the past four decades pioneering a stark documentary style that challenged the mores of postwar Japanese society. His works feature dramatic narratives and characters--radicals, outcasts and those on the margins--who struggle against adversity: "I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society," Kazuo has avowed. Camera Obtrusa is the first English-language publication addressing his work. Composed as a straightforward handbook, the volume offers Kazuo's technical notes on his groundbreaking filmmaking.
