That is This: Jitsuroku rengô sekigun: Asama sansô e no michi / United Red Army (2007)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Jitsuroku rengô sekigun: Asama sansô e no michi / United Red Army (2007)

Jitsuroku rengô sekigun: Asama sansô e no michi / United Red Army (2007)

Movie about Japanese student-radical extremism, the true story of the United Red Army faction

INFO:

Kôji Wakamatsu, Japan, japanese /english/, 2007, 190 min.
http://www.united-red-army.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Red_Army_%28film%29
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923869/

(en)

Koji Wakamatsu, Japan’s most controversial filmmaker, brilliantly reconstructs the most troubling episode in the bloody history of Japanese student-radical extremism through the true story of the United Red Army faction, which had its roots in the 60’s when Japanese students protested America using Japan as a staging base for its war in Vietnam.

In 1972, 14 members of the United Red Army faction lynched each other during group “self-criticism” sessions while training in the mountains and the survivors holed up at the Asama Sanso Mountain Lodge,

which quickly degenerated into a ten-day stand-off with the police that is one of the pivotal moments in Japanese history, as famous in Japan as Martin Luther King’s assassination is in America.

Wakamatsu’s film is an earnest attempt to process the shock that the Japanese left was experiencing at the time and to grasp the motivation of the militant students.

A gut-wrenching docudrama underlaid with electrifying psychedelic rock music by Sonic Youth founder member Jim O’Rourke.

(cz) Příběh o událostech okolo japonské Sjednocené rudé armády, jenž vznikla v červenci r. 71 sloučením Frakce rudé armády a Revoluční rudé frakce (zasvěcení vědí, jak obrovské množství podobných organizací na přelomu 60. a 70. let existovalo, viz stále omílaná kapitola kolem Badera a Meinhofové, italské Rudé brigády a mnoho dalších). Wakamatsu problematiku dokonale zná, stejně jako zná osobně mnoho zúčastněných (jeho politická orientace je dostatečně známa), a zuřivě tepe do vlastních řad.

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe0oK0iwS_I