Thorns of Love

Takachi, a young porno star from a small town in Japan is found dead. His death provides the opportunity to show us his true emotions, and how his two best friends in Tokyo remember him. These two travel back to Takachi's town, Kochi, which Takachi himself had visited just prior to dying. In Kochi, all boys seem to be angels.

In a near future where allergies have become an epidemic, music producer Haru half-heartedly dates post office clerk and mail thief Michi. He searches for violent ways to reactivate his life, she dreams of escaping abroad; both volunteer to test a new drug which may provide a cure.

This anthology film brings together a diverse group of directors at the call of actress Hotaru, who also works as a film director. It consists of five short films.

The film is divided into two chapters, "First Love" and "Endless Love", in which the author, Yoko Oguchi, chases after a different man, each saying "I love you! and chases after another man. In the second chapter, she screams in public, has sex with a man, shaves her hair and gets (really) yelled at by her parents. Beyond the fictionality and perfection of the drama, the author's daring and daredevil performance have a strong impact on the viewer.

Indie film by Fujiwara Sho, 2001.

Kenji Murakami seeks out legendary wildman director Kenji Onishi and arranges a meeting with director Yoko Oguchi. The meeting turns unexpectedly intense...

A woman believes she hears the voice of God in her mind and lives according to God's word. Her 16-year-old daughter, Sakurako, looks at her mother with a cold, cynical gaze. One day, the woman witnesses a young man being beaten and kicked in a bar, receives a kind of revelation, and brings him home. The woman, who also believes she is dying of cancer, sees this as a fated encounter, but her balanced life doesn't last long. The man, who had seemed like an intangible presence, takes concrete action for the first time, and the story abruptly collapses...

Oguchi Yoko belongs to that special category of film makers for whom life, work, documentary and fiction are basically one and the same thing. She is her film, her films are her. There is one significant theme that keeps returning, her masochistic tendencies. Here she returns to a relationship with someone who deceived her. A true story, of course.

A man (Masahiro Sugiyama), an idol otaku, picks up a monster fish and starts to raise it at home. At the same time, he moves in with a runaway girl (Yoko Oguchi), and the friction between them becomes more intense. The film was made at the end of the eighties, in response to the sense of stagnation in the provincial cities. It's a film with a darker side than my previous film "Love on the Street". It also has the strongest theatrical colour of all the films so far, but it shows the bankruptcy in a different way to "Street Corner of Love -".

Oppressive mixture of diary and (sexual) fantasy. The film maker also literally bares herself when she repeatedly stands in a corridor waiting for the inevitable. She is fascinated by the true story of a sadistic kidnapper, whom she links with her own Prince Charming. Sadomasochism without whips. The master rules with the spirit. Won the grand prix at the Image Forum Festival.

This is the director's first diary film, drawn in collaboration with a diverse cast and manga artist Yumi Enomoto. It is a serious self-documentary work with a comedic touch.

The films of Oguchi Yoko are extremely personal. In addition, Oguchi herself has a special personality that makes her films very special. She is an outspoken masochist and experiments in life and work with her sexual proclivities. She can get surprised about what people think is normal in the field of love and could find little understanding for her own norms. That's why she made a film about it.

"When I first started making films at the age of 19, there was this thing called an "8mm camera that could record sound simultaneously," and I used it as a weapon to take revenge on the world. Now, neither 8mm cameras that can record sound simultaneously nor 8mm film that can record sound simultaneously are sold anymore. But I still believe that "film is all about sound!!" So when I thought about what I could do now, I decided to use the voices of actors' improvisational performances as my weapon. That's what this film is."

8mm film by Yoko Oguchi.