New York: Japanese Art Theater Guild

This Thursday and Friday in New York, witness the beginnings of 1970s Japanese exploitation flicks when Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater airs three films from the Japanese Art Theater Guild (ATG), including Toshio Matsumoto’s graphic interpretation of the classic samurai tale of the 47 ronin entitled Demons (1971). ATG, originally an independent distributor of European art films in Japan, began producing their own films beginning from 1967 to become a major laboratory in the 1970s for New Wave directors, experimental and amateur filmmakers, documentarians, and veterans of pink film (soft-core erotic film).