Intensely intimate and brutally candid, Kazuo Hara's second feature-length documentary is an uncompromising portrait of his former lover Takeda Miyuki, an emancipated woman who not only defies the constraints imposed by Japanese societal mores but also, as the subject, challenges the traditional boundaries of documentary film. Marking the 50th anniversary of its original release, the film is still the undisputed ‘pinnacle of the ultra-personal’ film. It follows Takeda as she disputes with her lesbian lover, engages in a relationship with an African American soldier in Okinawa, gives birth unassisted while Kazuo holds the camera, and joins a commune of similarly minded mothers. Produced with Kazuo’s wife Kobayashi Sachiko, who herself appears in a deeply personal interaction with Takeda in the film, this work unabashedly exposes the astounding and wayward moments of Takeda’s embodied self-liberation in all of its searing contradictions and uncomfortable candour. Both transgressive and celebratory, Love Song 1974 is Kazuo’s savage yet revelatory declaration of total personal commitment, both behind and in front of the camera.

The screening on 14 July will be followed by a post-screening talk by Kazuo Hara and Sachiko Kobayashi via video call, moderated by Chanel Kong, M+ Curator of Moving Image. The talk will be held in English and Japanese, and consecutive interpretation in English will be available.

The screening on 7 September will be followed by a recorded conversation with the filmmakers that took place on 14 July.

Kazuo Hara (b. 1945, Japan) is one of Japan’s most important documentary filmmakers. He studied photography before working at a school for special education, the latter which inspired his foray into documentary filmmaking. In 1972, he founded Shisso Productions with his wife and producer Kobayashi Sachiko, with whom he made some of the most striking and often confrontational documentaries on Japanese society, including Goodbye CP (1972), Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974), and The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987).