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Between his earliest films in the mid 1980s and his 1990s “golden age,” Hisayasu Satô consistently developed and honed his cinematic voice. Drawing on contrasts in his work across radically different career stages, these three films offer a range of insights into the artist’s most compelling and recurring obsessions.

One of his earliest features, SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME (1986), Satô offers a meta-reflection on learning his craft through the story of two former film students facing the world and their own troubled relationship, through video-voyeurism and sex work. When violence manifests within sexual situations, a sense of fatalism threatens to take the lovers to darker places. A profound meditation upon loneliness and especially distance, both physical and perceived, Satô begins his visual experiments involving rephotographed video textures and discordant dialogue.

In SURVEY MAP OF PARADISE LOST (1988), an investigative reporter gets wrapped up in a story about phone sex clubs, and a sex worker named Midori who worked in one. Unexpectedly thrust into a world of sadomasochism, isolation, and suicidal musings, he struggles to fulfill his job responsibilities. But when it emerges that a recent death involving a sex worker was videotaped, and the reporter obtains the tape, they can hardly avoid becoming more deeply involved. Maintaining his obsession with the poetry of loneliness, Satô weaves a story of characters obsessed with death and exploring the most violent sides of pleasure.

As the theatrical heyday of Pink films was winding down, SOFT SKIN (1998) shows Satô’s lens turning to the absurd and comedic, eschewing the cynicism and unhappiness experienced by the characters in his earliest work for something more whimsical. When Minako, a lonely housewife neglected by her busy, self-centered husband and adult children, finds a suitor, they concoct a false kidnapping narrative to tease her family. Meanwhile, a young woman responsible for a series of chainsaw murders is also on the run. While television news (including Minako’s daughter as a newscaster) devours these sensational stories, all manner of bizarre interactions unfold as Minako contemplates her future.

STARRING: Junko Asahina, Moeko Izawa, Tomomi Kuribayashi, Toru Nakane

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