Pensive yet playful, Video Letter is a meditation on identity, death, and the limits of language. Made in collaboration with friend and poet Tanikawa Shuntaro (who also experimented with video and sound technology), it draws inspiration from renga poetry, a traditional form in which two poets correspond in alternating verses. Terayama and Tanikawa film themselves alone, sifting through possessions, unpacking nesting boxes, and leafing through poetry and photographs (as in so many of his films, Terayama is haunted by images of his mother). They share a phone call, and use intertitles and voiceovers as missives. Indeed, words are repeated and relished, obliterated with a marker pen, and swallowed in a wink and half-smile for the camera. The addressee of Tanikawa’s final intertitle is left blank, and Video Letter closes with the scrolling electrocardiogram that Tanikawa took from Terayama’s bedside. The cardiogram traces Terayama’s final moments in a cursive verse that underlines a life’s work.