Nakamura Masanobu

Known for: Directing

In 1969, as the political and revolutionary season was coming to an end, Nakamura Masanobu began making films on 8mm film. In a career spanning nearly 30 years, he has created more than 40 films. Inheriting the obscenity of the underground, Nakamura’s unique world, which indulges in more personal desires and expressions, is filled with freedom and venom worthy of being called “post-underground cinema.” His films, which combine images of fetishism, SM, young girls, confinement, and crime with experimental techniques such as reshooting, strobing, frame by frame shooting, and repetition, confront the viewer with the fact that cinema is a device of desire and suggests that watching it could be a violent experience from time to time. Nakamura Masanobu is one of Japan’s most dangerous filmmakers, who says, “If you don’t create a world that is out of phase with the ordinary, it won’t be interesting.”