Sex Underground features an eclectic and rarely-screened assortment of four decades of Japanese film (single and multiple projection), video, and animation exploring sexuality, power, gender and the body. Utilizing theatrical traditions and a powerful performative agency, film and video makers such as Ito Takashi, Nakajima Takashi, Donald Richie, Terayama Shuji and Imaizumi Koichi subvert and reconfigure sexual difference, queer subjectivity and gender performativity. From Idemitsu Mako’s lighthearted invocation of traditional gender roles and Tamano Shiníichi’s perversely magical realism, to Saito Yukie’s terrifying and oppressive exploration of male-female power dynamics, the works presented in Sex Underground collectively open unexpected pathways for desire and its subjects. (Jonathan Hall, Michelle Puetz)

For more information about this program, please visit www.humanities.uci.edu/jpex. For more information about the entire JPEX series, of which this program is a part and which is co-presented with Pacific Film Archive on October 19 and 26, please visit www.bampfa.berkeley.edu)