Ecstasy of the Black Rose Kurobara Shoten (黒薔薇昇天)

Ecstasy of the Black Rose Kurobara shoten (黒薔薇昇天)

Sábado 5 de marzo 21:30 Cinépolis Centro Magno 4

Color / Scope / 1975 / 72 min / Nikkatsu

Director: Kumashiro Tatsumi Script: Kumashiro Tatsumi Based on the novel by: Fujimoto Giichi Cinematography: Himeda Shinsaku Art Director: Yokoo Yoshinaga

Producer: Miura Akira

Cast: Juzo: Kishida Shin Ikuyo: Tani Naomi Meiko: Seri Meika Hajime (Pin): Tanimoto Hajime Yasu: Takahashi Akira Ishi-yan: Shoji Saburo Dentist: Yamaya Hatsuo

Setting: Osaka and Wakayama in the mid-1970s.

Synopsis: Juzo is trying to direct another blue film in an inn in Wakayama when Meiko, his lead actress, announces that she is pregnant and wants to stop working and marry her acting partner Hajime. Worried that he will lose money, Juzo tries to persuade her to continue, arguing that sex films are educational, advancing a country that is sexually backward. But his lofty words come to no avail and the crew has to return to Osaka. There Juzo continues with his second line of business: making erotic sound recordings, which are really just tapes combining panting animals sumo wrestlers and secretly recorded conversations. It is when he hides a recorder at a dentist office that he happens to catch some

sexual shenanigans between the dentist and a beautiful kimonoed woman in her mid-twenties. Fascinating by the sounds on the tape, Juzo decides to approach the woman, named Ikuyo, by posing as a private detective. She immediately thinks that he has been hired by the rich gentleman who has made her his mistress, so Juzo goes along, offering to give her the tape for a price. But finding himself deeply attracted to her, his real intention is to bed her and put her in his films. Ikuyo, however, thinks that all is lost and tries to hang herself, but Juzo rescues her. Intimating that he has not only a tape but also a film of the dental tryst, he brings Ikuyo to his apartment. There he starts showing her some of his blue films, which proves quite shocking to the ladylike Ikuyo. Admitting he is not a detective, he begins pressing her with his philosophy of porn—that sex is the most beautiful thing humans do and nothing will get better until people realize that—until she agrees to have sex with him. It is while they are fornicating, however, that Yasu, Juzo’s cameraman, sneaks into the room and begins filming the two. Ikuyo protests greatly, but Juzo declares they are making great art; overcome with waves of pleasure, Ikuyo eventually faints. In the morning, she tries to protest again, but impressed by strength of Juzo’s passion, she declares her love for him. The crew are back in the same inn in Wakayama, with Ikuyo now playing the lead role in Juzo’s new blue film. Hajime is her partner for the sex scene, but a visibly pregnant Meiko, feeling jealous of Ikuyo, keeps urging him not to come. Juzo tries to direct the action, cautioning Hajime to take it slowly, but when the actor comes too soon, overwhelmed by Ikuyo’s sweet body, the director kicks him away. Yasu, upset that the scene was ruined, scolds Juzo, who himself admits that his jealousy got the better of him.

Notes: Kumashiro Tatsumi was the most critically acclaimed of the Roman Porno directors, making “pink” (adult) films for Nikkatsu, one of the major studios that had mostly switched to porn production in 1971. Ecstasy of the Black Rose is lighter and more comedic than masterpieces like A Woman with Red Hair (“Akai kami no onna,” 1979) and The World of Geisha (“Yojohan fusuma no urabari,” 1973), but the elliptical editing and hand-held camerawork (often in long shot) is classical Kumashiro. It is also probably one of his most self-reflexive works, contemplating with not a small dose of self-irony not only the porn business, but also the relationship between sound and image and the lies and truth of cinema itself.

The Stroller in the Attic Yaneura no sanposha （屋根裏の散歩者）

Lunes 7 de marzo 21:30 Cinépolis Centro Magno 4

Color / Scope / 1976 / 76 min / Nikkatsu

Director: Tanaka Noboru Script: Ido Akio Based on the novels by: Edogawa Ranpo Cinematography: Mori Masaru Art Director: Kikukawa Yoshie Music: Tateshina Jiro

Producers: Yuki Yoshihiro Ijichi Kei Planning: Kuribayashi Shigeru

Cast: Goda Saburo: Ishibashi Renji Minako: Miyashita Junko Koichiro, her husband: Cho Hiroshi Tomita Miyuki, painter: Watanabe Tokuko Endo: Yshiro Koji Hiruta, driver: Oda Toshihiko Pierrot: Yumemura Shiro

Setting: Tokyo in 1923

Synopsis: Goda Saburo is one of the tenants of a boarding house in the downtown area of Asakusa, Tokyo. He has fetish for climbing into the buildings attic and looking into the rooms of the other tenants. He especially likes to look in the room where Minako spends some of her time. Minako and her lover play a sexual game where she is the dominant one and he dresses up as a Pierrot doll. Minako sees someone watching her through a peephole in the ceiling and it excites her. Goda realizes he has been found out and goes to another room to see another female tenant, a painter dressed in animal furs enjoying a sexual game with her lover. In another room a man, Endo, is sleeping. Minako‘s husband is rich and regarded as a person of high rank. It is his chauffeur, Hiruta, that rented a room for her sexual games and he always takes Minako to the place. He has designed a chair for him to enclose himself in while he pleasures her sitting on the chair in her house. Goda becomes more and more drawn to Minako as he continues to watch her with her Pierrot lover. He even tries to imitate a Pierrot doll with a prostitute. Minako knows that Goda is watching her. While Goda is watching, Minako strangles her Pierot lover to draw out Goda. She summons Goda to her house, which he willing goes to. Goda is excited by her murder and commits his own murder. He murders the sleeping man by dropping poison into his mouth while he is sleeping. While Minako is having sex with her husband, she poisons him. After killing him, she then burns Hiruta alive in his chair after he has pleasured her. Goda approaches the painter and asks her to paint his body along his vein lines. He then tells her that he wants her to paint Minako. After she paints Minako, Goda and Minako begin to take sexual advantage of her in a threesome. As the woman is being to enjoy it, Minako begins to strangle her with her legs and Goda helps her. Minako and Goda go to the attic to consummate their partnership. As they are enjoying each other, the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake hits and they are killed.

Notes: In the mid-1970s the film company Nikkatsu was making their profits by releasing soft-porn films to the Japanese market. The director of The Stroller in the Attic, Tanaka Noburu was one of the awards winning directors. In 1975, Tanaka had made a stir with his film, A Woman Called Abe Sada (“Jitsuroku Abe Sada”) he then made Watcher in the Attic. The film is an adaptation of stories by the famous horror-mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo. Many of Edogawa Ranpo’s novels have been made into films, but Watcher in the Attic is more blatantly erotic than the other films and illustrates more the author’s sadistic sexual note in his works. His stories were very popular in the 1930s and were part of the ero-guro-nansensu (erotic–grotesque-nonsense) genre. Watcher in the Attic was made into film, again in 1994 by Jissoji Akio.

Red Lust Tenshi no harawata—Akai memai (天使のはらわた赤い眩暈)

Martes 8 de marzo 21:30 Cinépolis Centro Magno 4

Director: Ishii Takashi Script: Ishii Takashi Based on the comic by: Ishii Takashi Cinematography: Sasakibara Yasushi Art Director: Hosoishi Terumi Music: The Fly

Planning: Sakuta Takashi Producer: Unno Yoshiyuki Narita Naoya

Cast: Tsuchiya Nami: Katsuragi Mayako Muraki Tetsuro: Takenaka Naoto Ota Kenji (Ken): Kobayashi Hirofumi Asano Mako: Yamauchi Yuho Ayumi: Izumi Jun Gangster: Emoto Akira

Setting: Tokyo and Kanagawa in the late 1980s.

Synopsis: Nami works as a nurse while trying to please her live-in boyfriend Ken, who is employed as a nude photographer. She is worried that he seems to be taking too many photos of a particular model, and tries to accommodate Ken by letting him shoot her as well. Nami sometimes does the late shift at the hospital and one night she responds to a call from a patient and is assaulted by two men. When one ejaculates early, she manages to escape, but the shock and the embarrassment lead her to run straight

home without reporting the incident to the head nurse, hoping instead for comfort from Ken. He, however, had brought his model home for a sex and photo shoot. Nami discovers his infidelity and runs out on to the street only to be hit by a car. That car was driven by Muraki, a stockbroker who had played the market using a customer’s money and lost big. Fired from his job, abandoned by his wife and pursued by threatening phone calls, Muraki had just fled his apartment when he ran into Nami. Scared of getting into more trouble, Muraki stuffs her in the car, thinking she is dead, and speeds away. Nami, however, is still alive, and Muraki, thinking his own life will soon be over anyway, begins to molest her in the car before she is fully conscious. She soon wakes and flees the car in a rainstorm, finding refuge in an abandoned building. Muraki soon finds her there and, angry at the world and at her rejection, tries to rape her, but soon comes to his senses. He apologizes and begins to talk about his troubles, bringing her food even as he keeps her hands tied. She initially refuses to eat or talk, but eventually she changes her mind. Muraki offers to take her back to Tokyo, but she says she has no place to return to and just wants to take a warm bath. Muraki takes her to a love hotel. There she takes a bath and the two become close, Nami finally telling him about all the troubles she had experienced. The two then make love many times over. When Muraki wakes, he can’t see Nami at first and, saying to himself “Oh, well,” thinks she had left him. But Nami is still there, wearing the new dress he had bought her. Having used most of their money, they decide to go back to the abandoned building, but run out of gas along the way. Muraki walks to a gas station, but there he accidentally bumps into a white Mercedes whose owner, a gangster, immediately shoots him for dirtying his newly washed car. Curled up on the ground, Muraki utters Nami’s name and the camera, as if becoming his spirit, speeds back to the abandoned building where Nami had gone to wait. Realizing Muraki will not come and that she is alone again, Nami dances to a cassette of the Tennessee Waltz she finds on the scene. Twirling about, she utters, “Oh, well.”

Notes: This was the fifth of the six “Angel Guts” films made within the Nikkatsu Roman Porno line based on the adult comic books drawn by Ishii Takashi. Ishii had written the scripts for three of the previous films, but Red Rusts was his first chance to direct a feature film. Starting with his manga, continuing with the “Angel Guts” series and concluding with such Ishii masterpieces as Original Sin (“Shinde mo ii,” 1992) and A Night in Nude (“Nudo no yoru,”1993) Ishii repeatedly used the names Nami and Muraki to depict a lonely man and woman meeting by chance in a cruel and violent urban landscape—usually depicted by Ishii as wet, dark, and neon-lit—enjoying a brief idyll together and then being torn asunder. Sexual violence often figured in these encounters, but it functioned to break the characters away from urban civilization and focus attention on Nami, the strong but tragic heroine, against the usually weak Muraki.

Tamanoi, Street of Joy Akasen Tamanoi: Nukeraremasu 赤線玉の井ぬけられます

Jueves 10 de marzo 21:30 Cinépolis Centro Magno 4

Color / Scope / 1974 / 87 min / Nikkatsu

Director: Kumashiro Tatsumi Script: Kumashiro Tatsumi Based on the novel by: Shimizu Ikko Photography: Himeda Shinsaku Art Director: Yokoo Yoshinaga Producer: Miura Akira

Cast: Shimako, a prostitute: Miyashita Junko Shiba, her gangster lover: Kanie Keizo Naoko, a prostitute: Oka Naomi Kimiko, a former prostitute: Seri Meika Shigeko, an older prostitute: Nakajima Aoi The madam: Ezawa Moeko Her husband: Tonoyama Taiji Matsuda: Furukawa Yoshinori

Setting: Tokyo around 1950.

Synopsis: In the months before prostitution was banned in 1958, numerous women are still pursuing the world's oldest profession in the Tamanoi section of Tokyo. Among those working at the brothel

Kofuku, Shimako, fond of tattooed men, gives the gangster Shiba all the money she earns. Kimiko, who lost her virginity to a customer two years before, is quitting the trade to get married to a kind, but average man named Matsuda. The young Naoko, hearing that her older colleague Shigeko slept with 26 men in one day the year before, declares that she is going to break that record. Kimiko visits the brothel after her honeymoon to confess that Matsuda is a complete disappointment in bed: no matter what he tries, he cannot satisfy her. Excited by hanging around the customers, she decides to take one and enjoys it like she never had before. The madam asks Shigeko, her oldest employee, to move to another brothel, but in one of her usual tricks, Shigeko tries to hang herself only to fail. In the end, she decides to leave. Shimako tries to scrape up money for Shiba which every way she can, including selling her broach to Shigeko. After delivering the money to him, she refuses the advances of another gangster, vowing to remain true to Shiba outside of work. Still, she hears from Shigeko that Shiba was hanging around with another woman. She confronts him with the fact, but he ignores her, shooting up drugs instead. Wanting him to stop at least that, she stomps on all the glass vials with her bare feet until they are covered with blood, an act of love that impresses even the hardened gangster. Meanwhile, Naoko is busy trying to break the record, but is bothered by drunk customers who cannot get it up. Following a suggestion by the madam's husband, she warms up her private parts over a Japanese hibachi to excite the men and speed up the task. The trick works, but she just finishes with her 25th customer just as the legal closing time hits. Tired and bedraggled, she runs up and down the street unable to find her 26th.

Notes: Director Kumashiro Tatsumi's portrayal of prostitutes differs from many that proceeded it by refusing to consider them as innocent victims, instead presenting them, in typical Kumashiro style, as strong figures who either manipulate men to get what they want or who have been transformed into beings that think with their bodies (the difference between the two types never being made clear). Kumashiro's deft cutting, which ignores temporal continuity and which inserts drawings by the famous comic book artist Takita Yu, offers less a narrative than an ironic commentary on sex and money.