kagablog

With this feature-length film made in 1999, Ian Kerkhof pays homage to Richard Kern’s underground cinema, using extracts from his famous film “Fingered”. An article by Ben Morris has already been translated into French about this unusual film, which, like all Kaganof’s original work, is impossible to categorise. We feel it necessary to look at this film again because “Shabondama Elegy” was shown this year at the first Pornographic Film Festival which took place in Berlin in October 2006, organised by Jurgen Bruning, the producer of Bruce Labruce’s four most recent films. But first we would like to quote a passage by Richard Kern himself – he is talking about Ian Kerkhof, whose first American retrospective took place in 2000 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco: “Ian Kerkhof is the Dutch Master of modern underground filmmaking and audience manipulation. His carefully disguised visual attacks always surprise and shock me. He always delivers on the most important promise of the movie-going experience: to be transported to an unfamiliar and magical place.”
A white criminal escapes from the Japanese police in the middle of Tokyo as a nationalist parade of cars drives by. His name is Jack (Thom Hoffman), and he gets to know a pretty Japanese girl (Hoshino Mai) in a bar in the capital. After the scene of their first meeting and rape, the girl accepts to play the role of consenting victim, and puts him up in her home. They give themselves over to a veritable sexual performance over a few days. The final day Jack feels the noose is tightening around his neck. The girl slips out secretly and pays some hit men (‘Yakusas’ in Japanese) to assassinate her guest. A few seconds before his death, which she has ordered, she starts to scream in front of the spectacle of his assassination. This film has the same beginning as the film “Fingered”, which is shown in parallel editing. Only the end is different. Is Kaganof’s film misogynistic? A little, perhaps, but not totally; the roles could have been reversed between the two sexes, but the story would have been less convincing and solid. It is certainly not the product of a misogynist film-maker, even if it may give that impression in order to guarantee the exciting dimension of the politically incorrect.

This last dimension, of which Kaganof is the Current Master, is even more obvious with the Japanese nationalist song played over the credits and during the hero’s flight. We shall try and give you a rough explanation of this choice. It aims to authenticate the underground nature of the work because real underground culture is marginalised today, as are extreme right-wing parties in Japan, though not in Europe. In his latest masterpiece “SMS Sugarman”, Kaganof covers this underground culture with a commercial veneer, but it is still very much in keeping with his project - transgression. In order to prove that we are against community elitism, let us quote these words of Kaganof’s, from the Etrange Festival 2002 catalogue, where this film was shown: “’Shabondama Elegy’ has given me the chance to work in Japan, using a cast from the porn industry, and without a single constraint as far as content was concerned. I was trying to show the reality of an actress working in the porn industry, rather than just using her presence as a ‘sensation’. Most of the time I was filming I was pissed out of my head; the producer kept on pouring me whiskey – he thought I’d give in to his sexual advances sooner or later. But whatever the case, I managed to keep my anal virginity while making a film in a semi-comatose state”.

Dionysos ANDRONIS

translated from the french by lucy lyall grant