'Afternoon Breezes': Hitoshi Yazaki's pioneer of Japanese LGBTQ cinema is revisited
What was Japan's first LGBTQ-themed film? One often-mentioned candidate is Keisuke Kinoshita's 1959 melodrama "Farewell to Spring," though more for the emotional ties between its young male protagonists than anything explicitly erotic. More upfront in its treatment — and more critically acclaimed — is ...
'Still Life of Memories': An erotic drama that perpetuates the male gaze
Hitoshi Yazaki goes slightly overboard with visual innuendo in an otherwise artistic film.
'A Cappella' conjures up the spirit of revolution in 1960s Japan
When I see Japanese films set in the late 1960s and early '70s, at the height of student protests, I always feel that something is off, while knowing that the "something off" is me. At the time I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, aka Counterculture ...
