Issue:
February 2025
Join the Film Committee…
Join us on Tuesday, February at 6 pm for a sneak preview of Masao Adachi’s Escape. Once again drawing inspiration from the headlines, the legendary auteur and former fugitive from justice began prepping his latest film almost immediately after a man identifying himself as Satoshi Kirishima died in a Kanto hospital in January 2024. Kirishima’s smiling, carefree mugshot spent nearly five decades at Japanese koban, and Adachi wanted to explore his 49 years on the run as a silent revolutionary. In the film, young Kirishima (Rairu Sugita) has been declared a terrorist for his membership in a militant group allied with the East Asia Anti-Japanese Armed Front (EAAJAF). After a bombing attack in 1974 results in fatalities, the police start rounding up members. Kirishima evades capture and begins working day jobs, unable to forge friendships or to settle down. As he grows uneasily into middle age, he’s haunted constantly by the images of his former friends, some of whom fled the country to avoid lengthy prison sentences, while others chose cyanide pills before they could be interrogated. As his health begins to fail, Kirishima (Kanji Furutachi) remains committed to a cause he barely seems to understand, consumed by self-doubt and constantly arguing with himself—there is no one else to talk to—about the proper path of struggle and his overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. Adachi and Furutachi will join us for the Q&A session. (Escape, Japan, 2025, 114 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles).
Karen Severns is chair of the FCCJ Film Committee
