Monday, November 2, 2009

Koji Wakamatsu retrospective comes to L.A. courtesy of Nicholas Rucka

by Chris MaGee

It's always good to see filmmaker, programmer, and sometime Midnight Eye contributor Nicholas Rucka pop up and make a blog post over at Maboroshii Productions. He's like the guy in amongst the online Japanese film blogging community who's the quiet one, the kind of guy who when he says something it's important and his most recent post perfectly sums that up.

Nicholas has just reported that he has put together a seven film retrospective of the work of avant-garde bad boy Koji Wakamatsu that will run at the The Silent Movie Theatre (611 N. Fairfax Ave) in Los Angeles throughout November. The series opens this Wednesday, November 4th with a screening of wakamatsu's most recent (and award-winning) docu-drama "United Red Army" (above) that chronicles the rise of the far left-wing Red Army faction in Japan during the 60's and 70's, a movement that Wakamatsu and his artistic and intellectual partner Masao Adachi were active in. Then Nicholas has screenings of "Shinjuku Mad", "Ecstasy of the Angels", "Go Go Second Time Virgin", "Running in Madness, Dying in Love", "Violated Virgin" and "Violated Angel" to follow it up.

If you're in the Los ngeles area (and I know you're out there) check out the full schedule for this November Wakamatsu blitz at Maboroshii Production's blog here.

1 comment:

Nicholas Rucka said...

Hi Chris,

Thanks for spreading the word and the name check! (You make my silence sound more monastic than it actually is...)