Even in this era of reality television and docu-fiction, only rarely has a filmmaker turned the camera upon their own private life with such candor and intimacy as Kazuo Hara in the aptly named Extreme Private Eros. While ostensibly focused upon his former love Miyuki Takeda as she comes to terms with her own bisexuality and intense distrust of traditional family structures, Extreme Private Eros also offers a portrait of Hara as a jealous and resentful ex for whom filming serves as a kind of harsh self-therapy. The film was, in fact, made in close collaboration with Takeda, who invited Hara to follow her to Okinawa where she had gone with their child to live with her girlfriend. Takeda also asked Hara to document her giving birth unassisted to another child, the result of her relationship with a black American GI. Adding further emotional complexity to the project, Hara invited his new girlfriend and producer Sachiko Kobayashi to assist in the production—resulting in one of the film’s most indelible scenes, a stinging conversation between the two women about Hara as artist, lover and human being. – HG