One of the most internationally acclaimed Japanese filmmakers and definitely the best known of his generation, Nagisa Ōshima can be considered "the supreme expression of the psychology of an entire era" — as the critic Audie Bock so aptly wrote about him. Descended from a samurai family and a leading figure in the infamous Japanese Nouvelle Vague of the 1960s, Ōshima has always been characterised by a lack of commitment to the humanist tradition of his predecessors, a rebellious ethic, strongly rooted in the subject and iconoclastic. His films, heterogeneous in form, are coherent in their obsessive traits: sexuality, criminal impulses, various transgressions on the limits of what is socially acceptable are mixed together in a delirious compound. In them, violence is always a response to frustrated political promises as well as a vital form of contestation among those who usually have no voice. As well as exploring this "politics of the flesh" to its ultimate consequences and aligning himself with social and sexual minorities, Ōshima has also developed an interest in exploring the dark areas of the unconscious, orchestrating "strategies of imagination" in his films that give a dreamlike complexity to a cinema that, paradoxically, has always wanted to be materialistic and anti-sentimental. Always accompanied by scandals and controversies, including a court case for obscenity after the premiere of In the Realm of the Senses, his award-winning filmography has also been marked by collaborations with figures such as David Bowie and Ryūichi Sakamoto. We present a selection of films that allow you to understand this unique work of cinema, in ten screenings that cover, in reverse order, the 40 years of the filmmaker’s challenging career.

Curated by Miguel Patrício