Masami Akita

Various life performances by Japanese Noise acts: Aube - Low Spin Drift / Incapacitants - Live At 20000V / Dislocation - Writing And Masturbation / Masonna - Live At Bears And La Mama / Seed Mouth - Twilight City / Violent Onsen Geisha - Night Of Unlcean Water / Solmania - Live At Living Room / Merzbow - Piss For Yves Klein / C.C.C.C. - Loud Sounds Dopa / Hijokaidan - Live At La Mama.

Directed by Masami Akita,who is also one of Japan's leading noise musicians under the name Merzbow. With a soundtrack by the director himself, this intense and ultra-gory seppuku film shows a young woman taking her own life by an act of ritual harakiri.

Routemaster is a montage of rhythmically organised repetitions and involves an abstraction of motion that increases in frequency and scale. The basic framework of the film is provided by intercutting of two counterposed materials. On the one hand, it uses black-and-white, endlessly accelerating and rhythmically varying images of the inexorable forward motion of the racing cars. On the other hand, it uses colourful, extreme slow-motion images of details of a chequered flag fluttering in the wind. The escalating speed, growing abstraction and mosaic-like repetition of images leads on to manipulated, yet realistic images of human bodies used in crash tests. In the end, all that is left is the black-and-white flash of speed, the gyrating pulse of the mosaic, the details of the human bodies and the intense soundtrack. Routemaster has some of the qualities of a live concert.

A woman in a nurse’s outfit sits in a dark room. She kneels on a mat and looks over a knife, touching it with her fingers and examining it. She runs the knife over her stocking clad legs and contemplates suicide. She plunges the blade into her abdominal region and pulls it across.

A school girl kneels on her mat looking over an old photo album containing pictures of people committing seppuku. Becoming aroused by what she sees, she touches herself and licks her fingertips. She pulls out a knife of her own, takes off her uniform, and in a very fetishistic manner proceeds to slit open her stomach and then pull out her guts.

Part of the Zankoku-bi: Onna harakiri 01 series.

Experimental gore horror film with music and samples from Merzbow, Tool and Aleister Crowley.

As a conceptual fiction, Asphalto describes the relationship of a man and a woman by means of metaphor and visual symbols related to asphalt, service stations, and automotive sports.

The only difference with this one as opposed to the other "entries" - is this one has 2 girls committing suicide, and they are outdoors and wearing samurai style outfits as opposed to Japanese robes or some other "costume". Also, they stab themselves with samurai swords instead of the typical shorter ritual knives...

A college student undergoes unorthodox surgical procedures by hospital nurses.

Short documentary on Japanese noise artist Merzbow by South African filmmaker Aryan Kaganof. Filmed on location at the Kamakura Temple, Japan, 1997.

The Dead Man returns, but it's too late to save us. We are already dead.

The film opens with a rubber-clad woman stepping sensuously out of a limousine. The camera lovingly closes-up on her stilletoed foot... She enters a dark desolate warehouse, and meets two men, who proceed to chain her up and worship her body. Originally projected on three screens simultaneously. Music by legendary noise musician Merzbow.

Live concert recorded at the Middle East cafe in Boston, MA on September 21, 1990.

Kansai New Art Video Magazine - Noise Collection. Rare noise compilation of some of Japan's top musicians in 1992. The first part includes an interview about the Japanese Noise scene by David Hopkins. Aube playing a parking garage installation using halogen lamps as sound source, Merzbow playing a small village in Korea as the townspeople look on bewildered, Incapacitants Live in the Mountains of Tajima, Japan.

A woman is covered in bandages before having her insides removed. This film is often confused to be a continuation of Romain Slocombe's "L'étudiante Blessée" due to the fact they were released in the same collection.

Video by True Romance, the performance art offshoot of Merzbow

Live footage and interviews with Japanese acts Kirihito, U.G MAN, ECD, Merzbow, and S×O×B

Live concert recorded on the MS Stubnitz in Rostock, Germany on April 6, 1996.

Video by True Romance, the performance art offshoot of Merzbow