The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
This week we are showing Kazuo Hara’s documentary *The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On *(1987) on Thursday, May ___ at 8pm.
Here is the link to RSVP.
Doors are at 7:50 and we’re starting the movie at 8:10!
Hara’s film follows WWII veteran Kenzo Okuzaki after spending 15 years in and out of prison for murdering a man who conned his car battery business, for distributing pornographic anti-Emperor material, and for attempting to attack Emperor Showa with a slingshot. Shot in cinema verite fashion, Hara follows Okuzaki as he continues his mission in his remarkable car to investigate the war crimes committed by his commanding officers in New Guinea against the native population and his fellow soldiers, and then to ultimately, personally, hold them accountable with sound and fist for their actions. Hara’s camera and the viewer are frequently and explicitly implicated in the action. In Okuzaki’s confrontations, his former fellow soldiers gesture towards Hara’s silent presence, at times refusing to discuss the question of cannibalism in the Imperial Army in front of the camera, or at others pleading for Hara to intervene in Okuzaki’s furious punches. This film will rightfully draw comparisons to Joshua Oppenheim’s much later The Act of Killing. Similarly, it slots into this emergent concern of the From Below with films that explore the legacy of WWII and fascism on the survivors, as perpetrators re-assimilate into civilian society and life carries on, paved over still smoldering atrocities. In particular, we’re thinking about the films we’ve screened over the last two years from post-Franco Spain, France (after the Algerian War), Post-Pinochet Chile, “denazified” Germany, and a Japan reckoning with the legacy of the Empire. Truth, memory, reconciliation, and violence are explored in the wake of these unique national stories of 20th century violence.
In pursuit,
Stefan, Charlie, and Stark