Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets

(Sho o suteyo machi e deyou, Shûji Terayama, Japan 1971, 137 min., 35mm, Japanese w/ subtitles)

Terayama. Shûji Terayama’s debut feature Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, an adaptation of his eponymous novel and play, is a playful, energetic, psychedelic, visually hypnotic critique of contemporary Japanese society’s descent into ruthless materialism. The story focuses on a teenager in hopeless search of identity within a highly dysfunctional family and a fractured world that both threaten to devour the boy—demanding everything and not really caring at all. A masterpiece of subversive cinema.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.