Collaborative Cataloging Japan is pleased to welcome curator Akihiro Suzuki to organize a special online screenings of films by Michio Okabe (1937-2020) in November and December. The November screening will present Crazy Love, a work packed with Okabe’s original sense of camp aesthetic.
We are excited to partner with Lightbox Film Center to present this program. The on-demand streaming will be available for $8 for non-members, free for CCJ members, from November 20th through 29th, on our streaming platform.
Still from Crazy Love. ©Michio Okabe
Still from Crazy Love. ©Michio Okabe
Crazy Love
1968, 16mm transferred to digital video, 98 min., b&w and color, sound.
Shot in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo in 1968 when the underground renaissance was blossoming and the excitement of revolution and liberation was in the air, Crazy Love is a portrait of the period. Spilling out of the established norm, Crazy Love is a collage of underground pursuits such as Zero Jigen’s (Zero Dimension) happening on the street, Genpei Akasegawa’s fake bill, a butoh dancer’s intervention in an ordinary scene, a march by futen (hippies), sexual expressions, and parodies of commercial film and advertisements. The film’s pulse is the music of the masses such as rock, Japanese and foreign popular music, and film scores. The performers are “crazy” stars of the underground scene that Okabe revered. The era’s darlings such as Rikuro Miyai, Gulliver, Tamio Suenaga, Yasunao Tone, Kenji Kanesaka, and Jushin Sato perform as eccentric characters, and other members of the underground scene appear as themselves. Okabe himself also joyfully acts out the roles such as Django and James Bond. Everything seems like a hoax, while at the same time delivering a portrait of the moment. This twisted realism is the campy art of Michio Okabe.
An unusually voluminous work for an underground film made in 16mm and running 98 minutes, this work is packed with Okabe’s original camp aesthetic with inclusion of the deviation from common sense, the abandonment of the narrative, the confusion of fiction and documentary, the active incorporation of outtakes, and the denial of professionalism. Just as Okabe described this work as “a kind of youth film,” the youthful free spirit that overflows from this piece continues to appeal.
Michio Okabe (1937-2020) began his activities as an artist in the mid-1960s, participating in the contemporary artist group Off Museum. He interacted with groups such as Neo-Dada and Hi Red Center, as well as artists like Ushio Shinohara, and presented at Yomiuri Independent exhibition (1964), Big Fight exhibition (1965), a solo exhibition at Naiqua Gallery (1965), as well as street performances. Influenced by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), Okabe made his first film work The Doctrine of Creation (Tenchi sozosetsu, 1967), which received a prize at the Sogetsu experimental film festival. Thereafter he made Crazy Love (1968), Camp (1970), Shiroyo Dokoe Iku (Shiro, where are you going, 1970), Shonen Shiko (1973, won a grand prize at Knokke-le-Zoute International Film Festival), Saijiki (1973), and Kaisoroku (1977). The works that sublimate Susan Sontag’s thinking on camp into Okabe’s original camp aesthetic, have been highly received and have screened in Japan and abroad. Besides film production, Okabe published fantastical short stories through reading programs on radio, magazines, fantasy literature anthologies, as well as his own book. Okabe passed away in September, 2020.
About the Curator
Born in 1961, Akihiro Suzuki is a producer and filmmaker who predominantly works in the fields of sexuality- and underground culture-related projects, and has directed, distributed, produced, and organized film festivals and screenings. He is also the director of S.I.G. Inc. and the underground online cinematheque, Art Saloon will open in December 2020. Representative directorial works include Looking for an Angel (1999), Lunar Child (2009) and Artaud Double (2013), a film of the performance by Masahiko Akuta and Ko Murobushi. Production projects include I Like You, I Like You Very Much (directed by Hiroyuki Oki) and Syabondama Elegy (directed by Ian Kerkhof). Film festival projects include the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Underground Archives, among others.