Special Series

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Flora on the Sand

砂の上の植物群

Directed by: Kō Nakahira 
1964 / 94 minutes / Unclassified 15+

Possession: A troubled man’s free fall into surreal meanderings of identity

Drawing from Paul Klee’s painting of the same name, Flora on the Sand premises with a strange imagining: Devoured by jealousy, a dying man swears to make his wife the weapon capable of destroying her future lover. Following the sexual exploits of an obsessive middle-aged man who is haunted by the womanising spirit of his late father, Nakahira dawns onto an era of leaking taboos – zealously foreshadowing Japan’s famed genre of ‘pink’ films. Swimming with artistic and daring themes, the film inhabits the dark recesses of a man’s psychological Pandora’s box as he dissolves into an ever-increasing Oedipus-like complex. 

Sister to The Hunter’s Diary in lead (Noboru Nakaya), release year and psychosexual perversity, Flora on the Sand sees Nakahira well into Japan’s unforgettable era of experimental cinema. 

Based on the novel by Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, this unique film is at once visually intoxicating and disconcerting – a slow waltz into a country’s unspoken obsession for suppressed sexual delirium.