The political and personal epic of the Japanese Red Army is recounted as an Anabasis, a journey that is both a wandering towards the unknown and a return towards home. From Tokyo to Beirut amid the post-1968 ideological fever, and from Beirut to Tokyo at the end of the Red Years, the thirty-year trajectory of a radical fringe of the revolutionary left is recounted by two of its protagonists: May Shigenobu, daughter of the founder of the small group, and Masao Adachi, the legendary Japanese experimental director, gave up cinema to take up arms with the Japanese Red Army and the Palestinian cause In 1974.

Two intersecting accounts, mixing personal stories, political history, revolutionary propaganda and film theory. Adopting an experimental documentary format, the accounts of May Shigenobu and Masao Adachi overlay new fûkeiron images, filmed in Super 8 in the contemporary landscapes of Tokyo and Beirut.

Eric Baudelaire

French filmmaker and visual artist. His recent solo exhibitions include Gasworks, London, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Elizabeth Dee gallery, New York, Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid, and Galerie Greta Meert, Bruxelles. Current and upcoming exhibitions include La Triennale / Intense Proximity (cur. OkwuiEnwezor), A Blind Spot / Documentary Forum II (cur. Catherine David), The Taipei Biennale (cur. Anselm Franke) and a solo show at the Beirut Art Center. His work is present in several public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Fond National d’ArtContemporain, and the FRAC Auvergne.

Filmography:

• The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images (2011)
• The Makes (2010) [Sic] (2009)
• Sugar Water (2007)

Contact details

Eric Baudelaire
info@baudelaire.net