Diary of a Shinjuku Thief
Nagisa Oshima, 1969, 96 min

Responding to Japan's radical student movements and the general climate of social upheaval, Oshima draws upon the transgressive writings of Jean Genet, the Tokyo folk experimental-theatre scene, and documentary footage of recent student riots to create an artful chaotic portrait of disruptive desire. Much like the Left Bank in Paris, or the Greenwich village in New York, the Shinjuku neighbourhood of Tokyo in the 60s was a melting pot for university students, artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers and experimental performers to coalesce into a revolutionary subculture. Oshima uses this setting as the canvas for his transgressive universe, introducing us to a young man who's caught by a salesgirl while trying to shoplift some books. The two develop a perverse attraction to one another, their deviant liaisons becoming the springboard for a provocatively experimental deep dive into theatrical artifice, social satire, unhinged surrealism and cultural subversions. In the process, Oshima creates a darkly comic mosaic of chaotic tomfoolery and desire, challenging us viewers to make sense of his carefully constructed confusion.

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Showing as part of Deviant Traditions of Desire: Asian Cinema at the Intersection of Folklore and Transgressive Desire