The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, January 25-31
Female Student Guerrilla (1969)
Directed by Masao Adachi
Adachi is one of the most controversial filmmakers out there: one who was actually involved in a terrorist group, Japan’s Red Army, whose members still appear in wanted posters in embassies and airports. Adachi’s films often dealt directly with left-leaning politically violent groups, like the one portrayed in this film, with enough self-consciousness to see how these kind of groups end up destroying themselves. With its usual mix of sex and politics, the film focuses on a group of young girls who make fun of men of any age as they plan a boycott of final exams, fleeing to the mountains and maintaining a base which they defend with weapons stolen from soldiers who fell for their sexual tricks. In time, a crazed soldier who seems stuck in WWII joins them, and the film becomes more lively as it changes from black and white to color, and demonstrates the natural decay of organizations that seem more fixated on the pure concept of rebellion than on ideology. Adachi doesn’t shy away from this condemnation. Jaime Grijalba (January 31, 7:30pm at Light Industry)