US Premiere: Masao Adachi, REVOLUTION +1

US Premiere: Masao Adachi, REVOLUTION +1

US Premiere: Masao Adachi, REVOLUTION +1
Followed by a discussion with the filmmaker

Admission starts at $5

Date
July 6, 2023, 7pm
172 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA

e-flux Screening Room is very pleased to present the US premiere of Masao Adachi’s REVOLUTION+1 (2022, 80 minutes) on Thursday, July 6 at 7pm. The screening will be followed by a video discussion with Adachi moderated by Ethan Spigland.

In REVOLUTION+1 Masao Adachi constructs a semi-fictional narrative around the assassination of Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022. Drawing on details from the life of the assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, Adachi tells the story from Yamagami’s perspective, focusing less on his broader political beliefs and more on his increasing resentment toward the church that caused his family’s ruin.

REVOLUTION+1 reflects the political and economic situation of Japan and the world, both of which are heading toward collapse and crisis. Since films only exist to be screened, there is a battle between the imagination of the creator and the viewer. I think this battle expresses the prevailing political situation as faced by both the creator and the viewer. […] As a filmmaker, I felt compelled to express my dissent by screening this film on the exact day of Abe’s funeral, even though the film was unfinished at the time. When I proposed this plan to the cast and crew, they agreed, and so I carried it out. So to answer your question, the intention was to practice a method that transcends the supposed binary between film and politics, revolution and art.”
—Masao Adachi in an interview with Go Hirasawa and Ethan Spigland, e-flux journal #135 (April 2023). You can read the full interview here.

Masao Adachi, REVOLUTION+1 (2022, 80 minutes)
Tatsuya Kawakami’s mother becomes a member of a religious group after her husband commits suicide, and makes a large donation to the organization. Her three children are forced to live in poverty, and her eldest son, who is blind in one eye due to illness, takes his own life. Kawakami comes to believe that the religious group has ruined his life, so he creates a homemade gun and carries out an assassination plot against former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who has close ties to the religious group, which has been accused of siphoning off money from its members.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility                   
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.        
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.                 
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.

Category
Religion & Spirituality, Film
Subject
Japan, Revolution, Violence, Family, Experimental Film

Masao Adachi (b. 1939) is an artist, screenwriter, filmmaker, and theorist whose radical anti-imperialist beliefs have impacted his life and cinema. Adachi emerged from the Nihon University Film Study Club, alongside filmmakers like Motoharu Jonouchi and Isao Okishima, to become one of the leading figures in the underground experimental scene of the 1960s. Though best known for his writing collaborations with directors Koji Wakamatsu and Nagisa Oshima, he also directed many of his own films, which usually broach interrelated themes of sex and revolutionary politics. In the early 1970s he moved to Palestine and joined the Japanese Red Army. He resided in Lebanon for twenty-eight years, lending assistance to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine until he was arrested and extradited back to Japan in 2000. Since his release from prison, he has resumed making films. Most recently, Adachi directed REVOLUTION+1, a film based on the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, focusing on the suspect Tetsuya Yamagami. On September 27, the day of Abe’s state funeral, a 50-minute version of the film was shown in small theaters across Japan.

Ethan Spigland is a professor in the Humanities and Media Studies Department at Pratt Institute. He received an MFA from the Graduate Film Program at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and a maitrîse in Philosophy from the University of Paris VIII under the supervision of Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard. Ethan is also an award-winning screenwriter, filmmaker, visual artist, critic, and curator. At present, he is working on a documentary about Julius Eastman. He completed two short films in collaboration with renowned architect Steven Holl. One of these, Luminosity Porosity, formed part of an installation at the Gallery Ma in Tokyo, Japan. His project, Elevator Moods, was featured in the Sundance Film Festival and South By Southwest, and won a Webby Award in the Broadband Category. His short film, The Strange Case of Balthazar Hyppolite, won the Gold Medal in the Student Academy Awards, and was shortlisted for an Oscar. He writes regularly on film and media for The Brooklyn Rail, Film Comment, and many other publications. He is a contributor to the forthcoming book Reading with Jean-Luc Godard on Caboose Press.

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