Made in 1969, Female Student Guerrilla captures Adachi Masao’s sharp, satirical approach to the student militancy of the late 1960s. Blending political provocation with the psychosexual and transgressive elements typical of pink cinema, the film uses the genre as a vehicle for satirical self-critique, while pushing its form toward parody and agitation. Made on an extremely low budget, the film was shot using locations, cast, and crew borrowed from another Wakamatsu Production film. 

“Female Student Guerrilla is Adachi Masao’s fifth pink film directed for Wakamatsu Production. The post-1968 direction of the student protest movement is depicted in this story about five high schoolers who take up arms and embark on a guerrilla-style revolution in the mountains in protest against their school’s graduation ceremony. The movie's portrait of a psychotic soldier prefigures the following year’s coup attempt, led by writer Mishima Yukio, at a Tokyo Self-Defence Forces base, and its examination of inner-group frictions (uchi-geba) foreshadows the Asama Sansō Incident of 1972, where conflicts culminated in a shoot-out between police and student activists.” — Hirasawa Gō.

The screening will be introduced by Erika Balsom.