It Maybe That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve – Masao Adachi

Between politics and art, between Trotskyism and surrealism, between Lebanon, Palestine and Japan, between yesterday and tomorrow, between beauty and determination – director of the memorable film A Lake from the 9^th NH, Philippe Grandrieux, known for his visual extremism, follows the story of Masao Adachi, another extreme filmmaker. Adachi, co-author of the Japanese new wave, eschewed filmmaking in 1971 to join the leftist militant Red Army and devoted the next 35 years of his life to fomenting revolution. In 2000, after 30 years of voluntary exile, he was arrested in Lebanon and deported back to Japan. Grandrieux’s nocturnal psychological portrait parallels Adachi’s dark mind, where Buddhist calm, surreal imagination and constant rebellion cross paths. This literally and figuratively dark film turns the cinema into a psychological darkroom with a fervent discussion on radical choices, extreme situations, transgression, the avant-garde and revolution. Revolution is also an image. The question is how to make it reality.