Dry Lake (aka Youth In Fury)

35mm print imported from Japan (courtesy of the Japan Foundation)

Released amid protests against the 1960 United States–Japan Security Treaty (which culminated in hundreds of thousands surrounding the Japanese National Diet building), Shinoda’s study of a young student radical marks an early blast of the Japanese New Wave’s youth energy. With a screenplay by leftist firebrand poet, theater director, and later filmmaker Shuiji Terayama, the film’s anticapitalist and anti-imperialist depiction of postwar Japan shows the alienation that fueled the protests—and made some consider more violent action.