About

Angel’s Body Temperature (天使の体温, 2001) opens on Aketo, a 20-year-old Tokyo college student with a lover, Hiroshi, who lives in Kyoto. They ache. They wander. When a young woman named Harumi drifts into Aketo’s orbit and into his apartment, the film wallows in nostalgia and alienation. Shot on digital video with a grainy, restless texture – like a relic too quickly-forgotten on VHS. Directed by Akihiro Suzuki, Angel’s Body Temperature belongs to a body of Japanese queer cinema from the late 1990s and early 2000s that has remained almost entirely invisible to Western audiences – a lost chapter of New Queer Cinema unfolding parallel to the movement’s celebrated American and European counterparts. Suzuki’s film shares that era’s preoccupation with young men adrift in cities. Outside of directing, Suzuki notably programmed New Queer Cinema for Japan and even co-produced Latin Boys Go to Hell. The screening will be introduced by Dakota Noot, who contributed a commentary track to the film’s recent North American Blu-ray release from Kani Releasing. A Q&A will follow, along with a virtual interview with director Akihiro Suzuki, offering rare direct access to a filmmaker whose work is only now finding the audience it deserves.

Event Organizer