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Blood Thirsty AKA Blood is Dry
(Chi wa kawaiteru)

Screening on Film
Directed by Kiju Yoshida.
With Keiji Sada, Shinichiro Mikami, Mari Yoshimura.
Japan, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 87 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: The Japan Foundation

Yoshida's second Shochiku assignment turned away from the studio's dominant focus on troubled youth and generational conflict in order to paint a darker and more despairing portrait of society in a state of moral collapse. Taking sharp aim at Japan’s harshly competitive corporate culture, Blood Thirsty follows a hapless salaryman whose desperate gesture to prevent the mass layoff of his colleagues is ruthlessly and absurdly exploited by his company for a deeply ironic advertising campaign. Based on one of Yoshida's original stories, Blood Thirsty is a formally daring and edgy film whose withering critique of corporate capitalism and the alienation of the working force remains particularly urgent today.

Part of film series

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Art Cinema, Counter Cinema: The Cinema of Kiju Yoshida and Mariko Okada

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