Kyokushiteki Erosu Koiuta 1974 (Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974). 1974. Japan. Directed and photographed by Kazuo Hara. In Japanese; English subtitles. 98 min.
Surely the most bizarre and brutally candid love triangle ever recorded on film, Kazuo Hara’s Extreme Private Eros is also the portrait of a defiant, righteous, and troubled feminist—the filmmaker’s ex-wife Miyuki Takeda—who flouts the constraints of Japanese society by striking out on her own as a single mother; arguing openly with her lesbian lover; giving birth, completely unassisted and on camera, to the illegitimate daughter of an African American GI; crusading in Okinawa against men in general and American soldiers in particular; and unapologetically emasculating her former husband to his new (and, in her eyes, lesser) partner, Hara’s sound recordist and producer Sachiko Kobayashi.
Minimata [excerpt from a work in progress]. 2019. Japan. Directed by Kazuo Hara. 10 min.
Kazuo Hara presents a sneak preview of his latest documentary feature, Minimata. Many years in the making (and scheduled to be completed in late 2019), the film is a portrait of the aging victims of Minimata disease, some 60 years after they suffered from mercury poisoning caused by the corporate dumping of wastewater in their fishing village. This national scandal remained hidden until Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s landmark films of the 1970s.