Join the Animation and Media Arts department to view Amélie Ravalec’s latest documentary, Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers (2025). This event is free and open to the public!

The film explores the explosion of Japanese avant garde art in the 1960s. The turbulent times of the postwar era – a time of profound social change, political unrest and student protests – inspired an artistic explosion in Japan, with the emergence of a revolutionary scene of artists who pioneered many disciplines: experimental and erotic photography, “Angura” theatre and underground street performances, apocalyptic Butoh dance, surreal illustrations and seminal graphic design.

A new aesthetic of photography was born: “Are, Bure, Boke” (rough, dark and out of focus), pioneered by Moriyama Daidō and the Provoke magazine photographers. Araki beautified bondage and Hosoe Eikoh sublimated the male body. Ishiuchi Miyako captured her experience of American military bases. Kawada Kikuji’s era-defining photobook The Map captured the poignancy of Hiroshima’s trauma. Master of underground theatre Terayama Shūji produced countless magical, surreal and vividly colourful films, plays and photobooks, Yokoo Tadanori and Awazu Kiyoshi revolutionised graphic design with their incandescent theatre posters, Tanaami Keiichi, Japan’s answer to Andy Warhol, developed his unique kaleidoscopic vision of Pop-Art, and Butoh founders Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo impacted modern dance forever with their dance of darkness and light.