UNITED RED ARMY (Japan, 2007)

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

190 minutes, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by: Koji Wakamatsu
Starring: Go Jibiki, Akie Namiki, Maki Sakai, Arata

WITH SPECIAL GUEST, SCREENWRITER MASAYUKI KAKEGAWA AND FEATURING A POST-FILM SATELLITE Q&A WITH LEGENDARY DIRECTOR KOJI WAKAMATSU

“UNITED RED ARMY towered head and shoulders above this year’s pimply Berlinale edition.”
(Cinema Scope)

"The Japanese Red Army (Nihon Sekigun), founded in 1971, became the most notorious of these radical groups for terrorist acts that continued for nearly two decades. Their exploits included hijacking airplanes, attacking embassies, bombing buildings and killing 26 victims and injuring 80 more at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv in May 1972. In Japan they first became widely known when five members took a hostage at the Asama Mountain Lodge in the Karuizawa resort area north of Tokyo in February 1972 and fought a pitched gunbattle with police.” (Japan Times)

“Consensus is boring,” says director Koji Wakamatsu one of cinema’s last radicals, who is still barred from entering the United States due to his political affiliations (we will be hosting a Q&A with him after the screening of URA on July 6, via satellite). In URA he tells the relatively simple story of the United Red Army faction which had its roots in the 60’s when Japanese students protested America using Japan as a staging base for its war in Vietnam. The radicalized students formed various political groups dedicated to ending the war and fighting the class struggle that split, splintered, polarized, balkanized and, ultimately, self-destructed. In 1972, 12 members of the United Red Army faction lynched each other during group “self-criticism” sessions while training in the mountains and the survivors holed up at the Asama Sano Mountain Lodge, which quickly degenerated into a nine-day stand-off with the police that is one of the pivotal moments in Japanese history, as famous in Japan as Patty Hearst being kidnapped by the SLA or Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination is in America.

UNITED RED ARMY is the story of how a group of idealistic students and workers wound up knee-deep in blood, gnawing at each others’ throats, and making this film was a major struggle. Director Wakamatsu knew many of the members of the Red Army factions, some of whom fled to North Korea, some of whom went to Palestine and some of whom are in the US (a Red Army member was arrested carrying bomb-making materials on the New Jersey turnpike in 1988). Basing the film on extensive research, interviews with surviving and jailed Red Army faction members and his own memories and friendships, Wakamatsu simply states the facts of what happened. The facts alone are enough to make you squirm. To make the movie he had to mortgage his own home, a small house he owned in the country was destroyed when he used it to stand in as the Asama Sano mountain lodge and he is distributing the movie himself. (Wakamatsu was also blasted by the Director’s Guild of Japan when he charged them admission to a special screening of the film.) The actors in the film were not allowed to wear make-up, they had to show up for work each day already in costume, and their agents and managers were barred from the set during shooting.

Wakamatsu refuses to editorialize with his film, and he will not take sides which will cause great discomfort to an audience looking for easy answers. Each recreated scene and incident is based on meticulous research and interviews. The five Red Army members in the Asama Sano mountain lodge vowed never to reveal what happened there, but Wakamatsu tracked down the last surviving free member in the Middle East where he’s in hiding and got the entire story. What emerges from this project is a deep dissection of ideology. It’s not the content of any specific ideology that’s our enemy, it’s ideology itself that robs us of our humanity and turns us into monsters. Wakamatsu should know that more than anyone. After all, he was there.

Festivals/Awards
Tokyo International Film Festival 2007: Winner, Japanese Eyes Best Picture Award
Berlin International Film Festival 2008: Winner, C.I.C.A.E. Award and Netpac Award