Throw Away Your Books, Let's Go into the Street - 1971 - NTSC - [Shuji Terayama] (JP)

Terayama’s first feature film is a scream for contestation, so radical in its ideology, narration, mode of expression, and even in its choice of music, that it seems to anticipate the punk movement by a few years. The opening shot shows an empty box ring, thus setting the scene for an painful confrontation with the demons of the director’s past, namely the oppressing role of family and the passing of time, destroyers of all hopes and dreams of genuine freedom for a young man running from disillusion to disenchantment. This work is also a means for him to express his position with regards to the crushing American presence in the country and the nation’s passivity and retrograde politics inherited from the 1945 defeat.

1971, 137 min., English Subtitled, color. Written and directed by Shuji Terayama. With Hideaki Sasaki, Masaharu Saito and Yukiko Kobayashi. (Also known as : Throw away your books, rally in the streets)