Yoji Kuri
Related: animation film - Japanese cinema - surrealism in cinema
AOS (1964) - Yoji Kuri
The ugly voyeurs (ourselves) at work. Their busy lasciviousness is obvious; but we are not permitted to see what they see. The device of a closed box with peepholes is eminently cinematic; the blackness of the surrounding space removes the event from reality and makes it mythological.
This extraordinary animation -- already a classic -- projects a universe of bizarre and frustrated lusts, in which monsters, voyeurs, and misshapen objects engage in nightmarish and often sado-masochistic outrages amongst Freudian symbols of anxiety. Max Ernst and Bosch come to mind, but the rage against repression is entirely Japanese and ideological: sexual anti-puritanism as a liberating device.
A universe of secret, illicit lusts, powered by mechanical contrivance, the intent is sado-masochist, the woman, incongruously, very hairy. The sexual anti-puritanism is viewed as a surrealist, hence liberating device. --Surrealism: The Cinema of Shock (1974) - Amos Vogel [May 2004]