Film/Video JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1999 $6 ($4 WALKER MEMBERS) ADMITS TO BOTH SHOWS AUDITORIUM

PASTORAL HIDE AND SEEK (DEN-EN NI SHISU)
DIRECTED BY SHUJI TERAYAMA
7 PM
The work of poet, novelist, and bo11ng critic Shuji Terayama possessed a prodigious visual inventiveness, with flashes of Surrealism and a strange personal le11con of imagery. As this delightful film reveals, Terayama believed that psychological exorcism is a primary function of art. A 15-year-old boy lives with his domineering mother, talks to his dead father through a medium, and takes up with the bizarre creatures in a traveling circus. Halfway through the film, he confronts his grown-up self--the filmmaker--and tells him he has bungled the telling of his life. Terayama's torrent of dream-like images, often reminiscent of Fellini, conveys his theme: "If we wish to free ourselves, wipe out the history of humanity inside us, we must begin by getting rid of our memories." 1974, Japan, 102 minutes.

FAREWELL TO THE ARK (SARABA HAKOBUNE)
DIRECTED BY SHUJI TERAYAMA
9 PM
Terayama's magical, flamboyant visual style was at its wildest in his final film, shot in Okinawa in the last months of his life, and belatedly released as a feverishly baroque swan song. In a remote village, controlled by the family who owns its only clock, a young man wants to have sex with his cousin, but cannot because she has been outfitted with a huge chastity belt. Humiliated, he stabs the head of the ruling clan, and runs away with his beloved cousin. Frequently compared to the "magical realism" of Marquez and the sexual primitivism of Imamura (particularly The Ballad of Narayama), Farewell is Terayama's grand summation, which he festooned with the most extraordinary visions he could imagine. 1983-1984, Japan, 127 minutes.