Carnival in the Night

Of a pair with his 8mm debut Saint Terrorism — in which wayward youths and sex workers navigate attraction and murderous intent — Masashi Yamamoto’s jishu-eiga (self-produced) breakthrough Carnival in the Night unfurls with a palpable sense of rage and abandon, capturing images of Shinjuku’s underground and transforming its DIY scene into a purgatorial and claustrophobic realm. Aspiring punk rocker and single mother Kumi (Kumiko Ota) drops off her child with her ex-husband and the world is bled of colour, beginning a phantasmagorical journey of self-discovery and self-destruction; a pitch black look at the margins of society contrasted by a backhanded, yet no less poignant, reflection on responsibility and motherhood.

Yamamoto’s film — shot in an hypnotizing vérité style — propels Kumi forward as she crosses paths with a variety of addicts, squatters and bomb-makers, her march ‘till dawn marked by senseless acts of violence. Anticipating the squatter’s eden depicted in Robinson’s Garden as well as the anti-capitalist global antics of What’s Up Connection, Carnival in the Night also prefigures Japanese punk cinema classics such as Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Bullet Ballet (1998). Saint Terrorism and Carnival in the Night, presented here restored from their original 8mm and 16mm elements, showcase Masashi Yamamoto at his most anarchic and transgressive.

"These are Yamamoto’s politics: to squat, to squander, and to soil reality. Whether anyone takes notice is beyond him; his unceasing state of resistance exists beyond society and blooms by virtue of its separation from its norms." — Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer, Screen Slate