Burst City

Director: Sogo Ishii

1982 / 115min / DCP

Ishii’s raw, raucous, hyperkinetic riot of a film functions as a showcase for the cream of then-contemporary Japanese punk rock, its machine gun montage perfectly matching the breakneck tempo of music by groups including The Roosters, The Rockers, Inu, and The Stalin. Shot with a meager budget on grubby 16mm black-and-white stock, Burst City’s dystopian vision, conveyed via a ramshackle plot that involves vagabond mutant bikers, cyborgs, and a yakuza clan constructing a nuclear reactor, would have an outsized influence on Japanese cyberpunk and the goth/industrial aesthetic. Feral, fierce, and singularly relentless, this is a movie you don’t watch so much as get dragged along by, holding on for dear life all the way.

Distributor: AGFA