05 March 2007

The Pornographers (Japan, 1964)

In this movie from Shohei Imamura, a group of friends start shooting amateur porn movies and sell them to friends and basically whoever is interested. The official title of the film is The Pornographers: Introduction to Antropology! But this is by no means a softcore porn, on the countrary, the theme of voyeurism is handled with a lot of professionalism. The viewer ends up as an accomplice to what is going on in the screen. In one scene, a father tries to involve his daughter in the shooting of one of his videos, and in another weird sceen, a woman is strongly convinced that his recently dead husband has reencarnated in a fish she keeps in a small bowl. Some scene are shot from the perspective of the fish, from inside the bowl towards the outside rooms in the appartment. Imamura is a pioneer in controversial subjects in Japanese cinema.

No comments: