Michio Okabe’s subversive underground film was shot on 16mm in Shinjuku in 1968, and documents the radical spirit of Japan’s creative and artistic scene in those years. Crazy Love is structured as a collage of diverse activities and performers, including a happening by avant-garde art group Zero Jigen (Zero Dimension), Genpei Akasegawa’s fake bill, a march by futen (hippies), and parodies of adverts and cinema entertainment.

Okabe was influenced by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising but developed his own distinctly kitsch, camp aesthetic, which is fully in evidence here. Challenging established social norms and codes of sexual behaviour, Crazy Love is a testament both to a liberated, experimental moment in art and film, and to an iconoclastic director (who himself appears onscreen, acting out roles including James Bond).

This screening is followed by an in-person Q&A with filmmaker and producer Akihiro Suzuki.