“Constructing an ideological strategy for our permanent revolution actually depends on whether we are able to gaze at that run-of-the-mill, unprepossessing, melancholy, grimy ‘commonplace landscape’ that lies all around us.” — Matsuda Masao (1970)

“I realized, in short, it wasn’t that we were seeing landscapes, but rather that we were being seen by the landscapes we were trying to film.” — Adachi Masao (1970)

Made in 1969 by Adachi Masao and his collaborators, AKA Serial Killer is a landmark of Japanese political cinema and the foundational work of landscape theory (fūkeiron). Nagayama Norio was dubbed a “serial killer” after committing murders in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hakodate, and Nagoya in October and November 1968. This documentary film depicts his life, from his childhood to the time of his arrest at age nineteen, using nothing but the landscapes that he would likely have seen during those years. 

This film gave birth to “landscape theory” and the subsequent debate that centred on critic Matsuda Masao and others’ analysis, but the public release of the film itself was delayed intentionally by the producers until 1975. Shots of urban space — homes, shops, and factories, along with freeways, ports, and the full range of transportation networks — track the unfolding landscape, accompanied by tension-filled music. The aim was to focus the eye solely on the homogenised landscape, which separates the film from auteurist aestheticism and from the realism of established documentary filmmaking. In doing so, it treats landscape as the site where postwar modernisation, social oppression, and state authority are visible and intertwined.


The film was made by director Adachi Masao, along with critic Matsuda Masao, screenwriter Sasaki Mamoru, producer Iwabuchi Susumu, and directors of photography Nonomura Masayuki and Yamazaki Yutaka. The music was supervised by music critic Aikura Hisato, with performances by drummer Togashi Masahiko and saxophonist Takagi Mototeru.

The screening on the 9 January will be introduced by Ricardo Matos Cabo.

The screening on the 15 January will be preceded by a recorded introduction by Hirasawa Gō.