Asian Movie Night: Sanguine Specters Stick to the Skin

Name: Asian Movie Night: Sanguine Specters Stick to the Skin
Cast: Ren Tamura, Miyabi Ichijô, Yûzô Morita, Enver Tenpai

Hoezo in KINO

From the tenacious roars of 60s art subcultures in Tokyo, Japan to the spine-chilling, prayer-like whispers of contemporary Southeast Asian cinema, queer lives have always been found at the center of artistic reflections of cultures and histories. With this edition Asian Movie Night is exploring how to engage with our (queer) pasts and what we see in the (queer) stories told by those that came before us. Who has been made present and who has been left wanting by the sidelines? What happens at the intersections of queerness with national identity, culture, community and state? Sanguine Specters Stick to the Skin is a reflection on past and contemporary cinematic depictions of queer lives and histories and the cultural heritages that we carry with us.

Credits

Regie: Isao Fujisawa
Cast: Ren Tamura, Miyabi Ichijô, Yûzô Morita, Enver Tenpai
Genre: crime, drama, romance
Speelduur: 85 minutes
Land: Japan
Taal: Japanese
Ondertiteling: English

Storyline

This is the only full-length feature film made at his own expense by Isao Fujisawa, who was an assistant director at Toei at the time and had worked as an assistant director on Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Others. Influenced by pop art, American new cinema, and Jean-Luc Godard, this is a unique love story about a stylish couple’s escapade and the conflict between love and body due to sexuality and gender. A bizarre world created by the dazzling primary colors and psychedelic images of the 1970s. Utamaro and Giko wander in search of freedom and liberation. Where will they end up? With a theme that was ahead of its time, this is a masterpiece of independent film that declared the birth of a new Japanese cinema and can be called a premature new queer cinema. The film was long considered lost, but in 2018, the original negative was discovered in a warehouse and a new print was made.