
Finally I got some time to make my own stuffs...hummm...a bit tired these two weeks.
Mandara (1971)
Directed by
Akio Jissoji
Writing credits
Toshiro Ishido
Genre: Avant-garde / Surreal Film
Runtime: 138 mins (CD1 70mins + CD2 68mins)
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Subs: as always, 700 sentences for a over 2 hrs film, not much.

Color: Black and White / Color
Sound Mix: Mono
Codec: DivX 1300kbps MP3 160kbps 688x384 23.976fps very good rips

imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0229553/
http://www.tamura-ryo.com/eg/history/history.html
"Mandara" (1971) production. Directed by Akio Jissoji
A film focusing on issue of sexuality and changing cultural values.
Story is a complex portrayal of a utopian cult rejecting social and sexual norms, attempting to return to a more primitive and emotional way-of-life, Leading role.
The second part of his newwave trilogy. As far as I know, Mandara is Jissoji's furthest step in film experiments, I think It's even better than Majo, a must-see film.
http://www.aasianst.org/absts/1996abst/japan/j33.htm
Mandala of Cultural Identity and Sexuality: Jissoji Akio's Film Mandara (1971)
Paul Berry, University of Washington
An often-overlooked confederate of Oshima Nagisa (1932-) and Yoshida Yoshishige (1933-), Jissoji Akio (1937-) was one of the avant-garde cinema directors of the early 1970s to focus on issues of sexuality and changing cultural values. Although Jissoji is best known for his first feature film Mujo (1970) and his biggest box office success Teito monogatari (1988), his second feature Mandara best portrays his attitude towards sexuality and Japanese culture. Working with the noted script writer Ishido Toshiro (1932-), who wrote the scripts for a number of famous films, including Oshima's The Sun's Burial (1960), Night and Fog in Japan (1960) and Yoshida's A Story Written in Water (a.k.a. Forbidden Love, 1965), Jissoji created a complex portrayal of a utopian cult attempting the union of sexuality and an agrarian way-of-life. Two pairs of alienated unmarried college students from Kyoto visit an isolated hotel on a beach near Tsuruga where they become enmeshed in the devious schemes of the charismatic cult leader who eventually leads his surviving disciples on a fatal ocean voyage. The cult advocates a violent rejection of social and sexual norms in order to return to a more primitive and emotionally real life focused on the attainment of an ecstatic state of near-death eroticism. These attitudes are mixed into a syncretic religion containing aspects of Shinto ritual, shamanism, and Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism. To effectively create a brooding atmosphere that Ishido describes as "the use of unreality to depict reality," Jissoji makes use of dramatic camera angles, the still photography of Sawatari Hajime (1940-), classical organ music, locales in Kyoto Zen temples and rural areas, and group scenes that include student members of a theatrical troupe from Ritsumeikan Daigaku.
An analysis of Jissoji's film and Ishido's script allows a critique of the fusion of death and sexuality found in the nationalist romanticism that emerged in the Japanese counter-culture movement as portrayed in sixties and seventies film.
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Session 33: Configurations of Sexuality in Japanese Film of the Seventies: The Social Significance of Sexual Pleasure
Organizer: Christine Marran, University of Washington, Seattle
Chair: Paul Berry, University of Washington, Seattle
Discussant: Motoo Kobayashi, University of Washington, Seattle
New Wave cinema of the sixties has often been the object of critical discussion while films of the ensuing decade remain, in many respects, uncharted territory. This panel will interrogate the significance of the evolution of sexual themes in films from the late sixties and seventies by Oshima Nagisa (1932-), Tanaka Noboru (1937-), Matsumoto Toshio (1932-), and Jissoji Akio (1937-).
While New Wave cinema often explored sexuality as inextricably linked to politics, the films of the seventies moved toward the explicit expression of sexuality on its own grounds; sex continued to be a place for affirming political revolution while it also became more mundane or visceral. This panel's examination of Matsumoto's Bara no soretsu (1969), Jissoji's Mandara (1971), Tanaka's Jitsuroku Abe Sada (1975), and Oshima's Ai no koriida (1976) explores the portrayal of homosexuality, nationalist utopian visions, and the multiple interpretations of Abe Sada in seventies' Japanese cinema.
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