Film Show 056: Akihiro Suzuki
An interview with the Japanese filmmaker about the importance of sex scenes, founding the first queer film festival in Japan, and his gay pink film masterpiece 'Looking For An Angel' (1999)
Akihiro Suzuki
Akihiro Suzuki (b. 1961) is a Japanese director, producer, and film distributor largely known for his contributions to the history of Japanese experimental, underground, and queer cinema. After graduating from college, Suzuki began working in film distribution, which eventually led to him starting the first queer film festival in Japan in 1992 called the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. He would highlight queer filmmakers both in Japan and abroad, including Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Jim Hubbard, Marlon Riggs, Ryosuke Hashiguchi, and Hiroyuki Oki. He would also work as a producer on Oki’s films, eventually becoming inspired to make his own feature-length works, including the 1999 gay pinku eiga masterpiece Looking For An Angel. The film, which was recently remastered and is currently on a theatrical run throughout the US via Kani Releasing, follows the death of a young gay porn star named Takachi and the consequent grieving of his friends. Suzuki called the film “neither straight, gay, queer, bisexual, asexual or pornographic, but [rather] anti-heterosexist.”
Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Suzuki on June 13th, 2025 via Zoom to discuss formative arts experiences as a child, the importance of sex scenes in cinema, and the making of Looking For An Angel. Special thanks to Monika Uchiyama for translating.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: What year were you born, and where were you born specifically?
Akihiro Suzuki: I was born in 1961 in Hamamatsu-shi in Shizuoka Prefecture.
What was it like growing up in Hamamatsu-shi?
In the ’60s, the city that I lived in was the second largest in that prefecture, but I wouldn’t say that it was a cultural hub. By the time I was in middle school, there were people doing things in underground film, theater, and music, and so it was around high school that I started to make friends in that area. That’s how I became familiar with the underground scene. And because it was a small city and there were so few people making underground art, it was easy to immediately meet everyone—they were from various generations and working in all kinds of different genres.
Can you recall any memorable experiences you had with art?
When I was in university, I was friends with many more artists than when I was younger. I was working on films at the time, but there was this underground theater performance that was really memorable for me. It was an outdoor avant-garde theater piece where the actors set up a tent as their set, and at the end they set fire to the area around the tent and the actors were singing. The curtains that formed the tent then dropped and the area that we were all watching from was consumed by fire. I remember thinking, this is so incredible, I need to see more things that are new and shocking to me.
Do you remember the names of those involved with the performance?
They were called Kyoku-Ba-Kan, which means “Circus Hat,” and they were active in the ’80s. The first piece I saw was “Jigoku no Tenshi,” which means “Angels in Hell.” [Editor’s Note: The group’s music can be heard on a self-released LP from 1978].
What were your first experiences like with filmmaking? Did you have your own cameras?
I wasn’t studying film at university. I was involved with the film club there and we watched films, made films, and wrote film criticism. As a teenager, even in a small city like Hamamatsu, there were people making films, and these were mostly personal and experimental films. In Tokyo, there were a lot of experimental film screenings by the Art Theatre Guild, so then there would be independent screenings held in Hamamatsu for screenings like those. My interest in high school was more about music and less so about films. I was really into punk music and played in bands.
What sort of music did your band play? What was the environment you were part of?
In high school I was listening to Zuno Keisatsu, Les Rallizes Dénudés, Yonin Bayashi, and Magical Power Mako. This was also the time of early punk, so I was listening to people like Sex Pistols and Television. I mainly listened to progressive rock, so I liked King Crimson but also avant-garde German rock bands such as Can, Faust, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze.
Did you see Les Rallizes Dénudés live?
I saw them twice when I was in college.
Wow. I have to ask, what was [frontman] Mizutani like live?
You show up before the show, and then the start time comes and they’re nowhere to be seen, the background music is playing in the club, and oftentimes we’d be waiting an hour or two for them to come on stage. Mizutani would eventually come on stage and say, “Thank you all for coming” and then hit a huge, loud chord on his guitar. I just remember thinking, wow.
Do you feel like your experiences with being in a band were significant for your filmmaking practice?
In high school I was in a prog rock band influenced by Pink Floyd and Supertramp. I was on keys and vocals. We were also playing covers of the Flower Travellin’ Band. Once I was in university, I was more interested in punk, so my band then played covers of Echo & the Bunnymen and The Damned. Then we started making our own original songs.
Were you involved or interested in any of the hardcore punk bands in Japan, or was it mostly these post-punk and new wave bands from the West?
I was never that into hardcore punk when I was at university. I was into post-punk and I was into a Japanese band called Jagatara, which was more influenced by funk and Afrobeat. I was also interested in bands on Rough Trade, so this was more like art punk. I was listening to The Pop Group, Throbbing Gristle, This Heat in terms of overseas bands, and then Inu, Yoshino Daisaku & Prostitute, P-Model and many others in Japan. I also liked ’60s music such as The Velvet Underground, The Doors, and free jazz.
So you played music in college but also made films, did you feel like these two practices were connected?
I definitely saw the two as very connected, and never considered them to be distant practices. I think it had to do with the people around me because they were both music and film people. During that time, music and film—and I’m talking about personal film and experimental film— were very intertwined. You could see that in New York City with no wave, with how it wasn’t just a musical movement but also a filmmaking one. Something similar was happening in Japan.
Were you aware of filmmakers like Richard Kern and Nick Zedd? Were these films being shown in Japan at all?
When they were released, which is when I was at university, I didn’t have an opportunity to see them. But once I became an adult and worked in film distribution, I had the opportunity to distribute Richard Kern’s films.
When did you start working in distribution?
This would’ve been after university in the 1990s.
I know that before Looking For An Angel (1999), you were a producer for Hiroyuki Oki. Can you talk about the things you were doing prior to making the film, shortly after college?
After university, I started working at a film-related company. They put on screenings and handled distribution, so I joined the latter department. Films that I had helped distribute were those by Morio Agata, who was a folk singer in Japan. He made a 35mm independent film. Then also Gregg Araki and Bruce LaBruce. It was my work in distribution that led to me starting the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival with another director and film programmer who was my colleague. That was the first LGBTQ-focused film festival in Japan, and that led to my general focus on distributing New Queer Cinema and working with Hiroyuki Oki, who was under that umbrella.
Wow, there’s so much here that’s incredible. I didn’t even know Morio Agata made films. What was his film like?
So his film was called I’m No Angel (1977), and it was actually based on a manga from the 1970s called Red Colored Elegy (1970-1971). It was about an animator and his lover living in a very small room together. Agata cast himself as the lead. His girlfriend at the time, Mako Midori, was the lover and they shot this 35mm film.
Who was the other filmmaker you started this festival with?
The other person I mentioned is Takashi Toshiko, who still continues to be a filmmaker. Back then, she was working part-time as a projectionist and we shared the same taste in film. They’ve had retrospectives of her work at the Yebizo International Festival and also at the Yamagata Film Festival.
Oh yeah, she’s credited as a writer on Looking For an Angel, right?
Yes, she was a really important consultant on the film and helped a lot on the making of it.
What was the inaugural year for the festival you started?
1992. Coincidentally, there was another LGBTQ film festival that started the same year, but ours took place at Parco, which is a cultural space in Shibuya. It was the first large-scale LGBTQ film festival in Japan.
Was there a lot of pushback? What films screened there? I’m curious if you could share anything about what it was like to run the festival and what the response was like.
As far as films from abroad, we showed a lot of experimental shorts and documentaries. Things that come to mind are Bruce LaBruce’s No Skin Off My Ass (1991), Ulrike Ottinger’s Freak Orlando (1981), and Gregg Araki’s Three Bewildered People in the Night (1987). For Japanese films, I remember we screened an Hiroyuki Oki film that he made on 8mm [Color Eyes (1992)], and a Ryosuke Hashiguchi feature film also made on 8mm [A Secret Evening (1989)].
Since we were starting a film festival from scratch, we were trying to find funding and reached out to various companies to see if they’d like to sponsor us. We were completely rejected. None of these bigger companies wanted to help out our film festival; they even said that we were just running a porn film festival. Thankfully, Parco was very supportive from the beginning and understood the importance of putting a spotlight on LGBTQ culture. We used the space for about a week, having screenings from morning until evening. And even though we didn’t have the understanding of the public at the beginning, by the end of the festival we were selling out most of the screenings at the 200-seat theater. One thing I remember is that there were men, of course, but there were a lot of women in the audience.
Were you surprised by that?
I wasn’t surprised so much as really happy to see it. I already knew that gay culture in Japan had a lot of women fans. Also, we had a lot of staff helping us run the festival who were lesbians. We had a lot of lesbian audience members, too.
What about yourself? Are you gay?
No, I’m not gay.
Wow, how did you first get involved with LGBTQ culture then? You’re not just making films about this, you’re distributing works and starting up an entire film festival.
When I say I’m not gay, I guess it sounds like I’m saying that I’m heterosexual. And I suppose it’s true, but I’ve always recognized a kind of queerness in myself. I see in my own sexuality something that is very relatable to me in queer culture. When I was in elementary and middle school, there were friends around me who were gay, so I never felt homophobic either.
What was the impetus for starting the festival? Everything you’re saying can be true, but I’m curious to know why you wanted to do something at this scale.
Initially, it was that I had heard about gay and lesbian film festivals abroad. When I heard about the concept of this kind of fest, I really just wanted to go and see what that was like. Takashi and I went to the Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival in New York and I remember it being so much more diverse and broad than any kind of queer film festival I could’ve imagined. I was really drawn to how free and personal that many of the films were. I wanted to take that feeling—of being moved and inspired by these works—and bring it with me to Japan to show others.
Can you share a bit about what it was like to work on those Hiroyuki Oki films? What do you feel like you learned that was important for your own practice?
It’s interesting. What did I learn from him? I produced some of the films he made that were larger in scale than those he screened at our festival. Oki, early on, was making films on 8mm and 16mm where he not only directed but manned the camera. He was really interested in doing something with a bigger budget, all while maintaining that style of filmmaking that he put together with a small crew. That idea really resonated with me, this notion of preserving the same spirit while scaling up. In Japan, there are gay pinku films that are made for the purpose of screening in a porno theater. We were approached by a company that produced these films, and I said that Oki would be a great director to make a feature-length film. He hadn’t made one yet, and I thought him making a gay pinku would be great. This is what led to him being the director and me being the producer.
Is this Tarch Trip (1993)?
This was I Like You, I Like You Very Much (1994). Other than that, I also helped produce other pinku eiga that were not specifically gay. With Tarch Trip, there was this German producer who worked on Bruce LaBruce’s No Skin Off My Ass. He approached us and said that Oki should make a film, and I was the Japanese producer on that project.
When I saw Oki’s Tears of Ecstasy (1995), I was really struck by how it was a structuralist pink film—each scene is 60 seconds, so it’s something like James Benning’s One Way Boogie Woogie (1977). I love that this spirit of experimentation exists there, which is something I also feel with Looking For An Angel. What sort of things were you thinking about with regards to form and materiality?
This has a little to do with Oki’s influence on me, which you asked me about earlier. Up until Looking For An Angel, I had only worked on personal films and I hadn’t really made a feature or anything that was fictional. I wanted to keep this idea that he had, that one can maintain their own style and sensibility and scale up, and that’s what I did with Looking For An Angel. The agreement with the film production company was that they would fund half of it and I would fund the rest. The criteria was that it had to include a number of erotic scenes, but other than that I had free rein to determine the story and anything else. Within those restraints, I really wanted to make a film that experimented with form in a way that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do otherwise.
Even with the screenplay, it was all just plot and storyline; I didn’t really write a scene-by-scene script. With this film, I wanted to combine narrative film elements with footage of the gay community around me shot in a very personal way. It would be a diaristic film but also a narrative one.
How much of the film’s story is based on real events?
It’s not based on anything that happened in real life, but I did know that I wanted to make a film that was about someone who died and then his friends remembering him.
I wanted to ask you about working with Jun Kurosawa, as NEKO-MIMI (1993) has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. Looking For An Angel also has one of my favorites, and it was really beautiful to learn that you two collaborated. Why was he chosen as one of the cinematographers for your film? Why’d you bring him on?
Jun was the main cameraman for Looking For An Angel, and I met him through this director from the Netherlands, Ian Kerkhof. He made a film in Japan called Tokyo Elegy (1999), and I was the producer on that film. Ian said to me that he loved NEKO-MIMI and wanted Kurosawa to shoot his film, and that’s how we got in touch and how he joined my own film project. And actually, with regards to Tokyo Elegy, Kurosawa and Kerkhof ended up having a fight so Kurosawa ended up leaving the project. Still, I knew that I wanted to work with him.
How did you know that?
I knew that I wanted to work with a cameraman who had different qualities from myself; he’d be able to capture things that I would never be able to. I was familiar with his films, and we eventually became friends and would drink together, go see movies and shows together.
Can you talk about the decision behind shooting certain scenes digitally versus on film?
I shot on DV, MiniDV, 8mm, Super 8mm, and 16mm, but in the end, we had to transfer everything to 16mm and blow it up to 35mm for screening—the digital version was scanned from the 35mm print. Any of the scenes that had plot written into the script were shot on 16mm by Jun Kurosawa, and this was because it required a cast and crew. Any scenes that I decided to include after the fact were shot on 8mm or other types of media. There are portions of the film that are shot narratively, and these are objective. And then there are the more subjective scenes that are shot on 8mm. It was important for me to mix all the media together.
Why was it important?
I didn’t want to create a world that only reflected a single value system—I wanted to convey a variety of perspectives. I’ve always felt that the textures and resolutions of different types of film media can convey something different, whether that’s emotional or something else. When combining personal documentary and narrative film, I didn’t feel that shooting everything at the same resolution would convey everything effectively. I thought it’d be easier to match the emotionality with specific formats.
When did you recognize that these different formats provided different emotional resonances? Was that from seeing different films or from personal experiences of using these cameras yourself?
I think if anything, it was just through the process of making films. I started to realize that there were different harmonies that existed between the emotion and the image that’s captured. I was referencing those experiences.
You said that you had these films that Jun shot on 16mm and then you had your own personal footage. Did you have a specific structure in mind early on or did things only come together during the editing process?
Things were really shaped during the edit. We would film a certain amount of footage and then review it, and then begin editing. The process was quite haphazard because depending on what I saw, the narrative was very malleable. I knew that there was going to be this mix of narrative and personal storytelling, but it was really just about watching the footage, editing it, and adding footage where I felt something was missing. I couldn’t fully reflect on what the film was actually about until the first time we screened it—it was a private screening. I watched it from beginning to end with the sound and music, and it was only then that I could be satisfied with what I made.
Can you share a little bit about the songs you decided on for the film, like those from Koji Shishido?
(in disbelief) Oh, wow! Yes, Koji Shishido.
The music is crucial in shaping the images that they soundtrack, in maintaining a specific atmosphere. How did you approach this?
With regards to that Koji Shishido song, I believe it plays while people are walking on a walkway or overpass, and it’s something that I already knew. I just went to him and asked for permission. Otherwise, it was just a selection of music that I liked or music that was recommended to me, or CDs that were given to me by friends. I’d file through them and see what’d be apt for certain scenes, what’d make sense as soundtrack music.
Given that you had seen and known about pink films and Looking For An Angel is part of this lineage, I’m wondering if you could talk to me about the significance of seeing sex in film. Just generally speaking, do you have any thoughts on sex scenes and how to make them meaningful, or if they even have to be meaningful?
I think my answer may connect back to your question about my own sexuality and how I described it. I believe that sexuality is deeply connected to identity. Sex is not just a means to understand or affirm one’s sexuality, it’s a way to understand and confirm one’s existence. That’s what I think about with the importance of sexual acts. When I was making the movie, that’s what I was thinking about. In the film, the protagonist is very hesitant to recognize himself as gay, or accept his gay identity, yet he has these sexual urges and desires towards men. But then he’ll also try to pursue sex with women to try and affirm the opposite—that he’s not gay. I think of sexuality as being something fluid, both in the film and in my life, and that sexual relations are not just confirming what your category is, but affirming your own existence.
This is all so beautiful. I had to stop myself from crying.
Thank you so much. To add to that, and this continues on today with how I think about things, sex is more about intimacy and less about the actual act. Sex is simply under the umbrella—or one shape—of intimacy and connecting with one another. That’s the type of world I wanted to create within the film. Sex and sexuality are not identity categories—it’s not like other people can really define others, like oh you’re gay or you’re lesbian. Sexuality is very much an in-between state, and sex is one representation of intimacy, which is the true essence of relating to one another. Sorry I gave such a complicated answer (laughter).
It’s okay! These things can’t and shouldn’t be so simple. Were there any filmmakers you were inspired by for Looking For An Angel? And this doesn’t have to be with regards to the look of the film, but maybe something more broadly, or with regards to its spirit.
I wouldn’t say that there were any specific works that inspired me, but I was really inspired by New Queer Cinema, Nouvelle Vague, New American Cinema, American underground cinema, and the Nikkatsu Roman Pornos. I was absorbing so many different kinds of films, so when I started to think about how I wanted my work to fit in this landscape, this is what came out.
I was also greatly influenced by Japanese underground and experimental films, as well as the many 8mm personal and independent films that were being made in the same era. These are small films that are hardly mentioned by name in books on Japanese film studies and are no longer available for viewing. The freedom in these films, and the passion to make what you wanted to without worrying about “the common sense” of film made me feel new possibilities, and I could not get this from mainstream films.
I love that you had this online cinematheque called Art Saloon where you presented experimental films. And I know that you introduced works by the late Masanobu Nakamura for Collaborative Cataloging Japan. One of my friends, Ann Adachi-Tasch, runs that archive and I’ve been following it for a long time. Is there anything about him that you’d like to share?
It’s hard to choose a favorite work of his because he made so many—he made over 30 films. Two that come to mind are Autumn in Beijing (1978) and Windmill Walk (1972). I think of him as a very quintessential queer filmmaker despite the fact that he’s heterosexual. It’s in his filmmaking. His films are very fetishistic in a lot of ways, and he manifested whatever he wanted to make and was very free in how he made them—he pursued his vision without any hesitation. That’s something I really admired about him, but I also think that he’s a filmmaker that a lot of people resist and ignore, and I have a soft spot for filmmakers like that—it makes me want to share them with more people.
Is there anything about Looking For An Angel that we didn’t talk about today that you want to mention?
One thing I’d like to mention is Akira Kuroiwa, who plays a character named Sarao, who is a young boy prostitute. Kuroiwa, the actor, unfortunately passed away in May 2023. I want people to see the film and really take in his glistening aliveness at the time. It was his death that was the catalyst for having the film remastered and shown in theaters. When I was able to see it on the big screen for the first time in a long while, it was something that really struck me. Cinema is a way of preserving the aliveness of people, and that was something that deeply moved me when I got to encounter him again. I want people to see the film as a record of the lives of those who appear in it.
I have to ask, then, as I know that he’s also in Angel’s Body Temperature (2003)—are there any plans for that film to get remastered and distributed?
Of course if there was an opportunity to remaster it I would take it, but since it was shot on DV, I think it would be a little difficult to make it viewable on larger screens. There’s also the issue of subtitling, so let’s just say it comes down to financial issues (laughter). [Editor’s Note: Kani Releasing has recently announced that they will make the film available on home video from a brand new scan of the tape elements].
I appreciate that you brought up Akira Kuroiwa because he was a lot less known than Koichi Imaizumi, who was in a lot of Hisayasu Sato’s films. In Looking For An Angel, you have those who starred in multiple pink films whereas others who haven’t really starred anything. I’m curious if you could talk about the casting.
Imaizumi, who plays Takachi, and Hotaru Hazuki are the only two professional actors. Everyone else is a non-actor, and that was something I knew from the beginning—I wanted to work with people who weren’t professionals so there could be this documentary element. For example, the drag queen in the film is an actual drag queen. I scouted people from around the community, and some of my gay friends are in the film, and even Oki is in the film as this really strange man. That was all intentional.
Do you remember what the reception was like when the film was first shown in 1999?
When it came out, professional film critics and most people in the film world largely ignored it. I don’t think that there was any reaction from them, really. Of course there were some people who wrote about it in magazines and were passionate about it, but critics who were well known didn’t pay any attention. I think it was largely because people didn’t see the film as polished; it was seen as this amateur, trashy film. But once we had our theatrical run, I remember that there was a large demographic of women who came to see it.
There’s a question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing that you love about yourself?
(gasps). That’s a hard question! If you asked me this question at the beginning of the interview I’d be thinking about it the entire time. (pauses to think and then bursts in laughter). I’m a little squeamish about this, but I’ve landed on an answer. I want you to know that I’m a person who’s generally against authority. What I love about myself is that I’m a tolerant person and I try to be as open-minded as possible. The most important thing for me is to be free. Therefore, I dislike power, social norms, and categorization by others that suppress my freedom. I feel that this is a very violent thing, and I think Looking for An Angel also depicts the discomfort of minorities living in a world dominated by heterosexual values and the violence of heterosexual values.
When I am asked about my sexuality and answer, “I am not gay,” I am always asked, “Why are you making a gay film if you are heterosexual?” I would then ask, “What is your image of heterosexuality?” Issues of sexuality and identity are very important to me. I make films that are honest about my sexuality and identity. Films are closely connected to my personal sense of self—that’s why I’ve always been independent. Someone will ask, “Gay or not gay?” and categorize me or my work by someone else’s standards, and when I am ignored or denied, whether it is from the gay side or the heterosexual side, I feel I am being treated violently. I want to be tolerant of others because I do not want to be violent. I am looking for freedom and intimacy in our relationship.
Akihiro Suzuki’s Looking For An Angel is playing in theaters around the United States via Kani Releasing. Find all details here.
Akihiro Suzuki’s Picks
A selection of Japanese underground, experimental, and independent films that Akihiro Suzuki likes. These are listed in the order that he emailed to me.
Michio Okabe: I like all of his films, especially The Doctrine on Creation (1967), Crazy Love (1967), Camp (1970), and Seasonal Calendar (1973). He is special to me!
Isao Fujisawa: Bye Bye Love (1974). This film is being distributed by Kani Releasing in the US and Canada.
Masato Hara: Hatsukuni Sirasimera Mikoto (1973-2001). Double-projection expanded cinema.
Masao Adachi: A.K.A. Serial Killer (1975)
Hiroyuki Oki: Tarch Trip (1993). I was the line producer and production designer in Japan.
Jin Tatsumura: Carol (1974). Pop documentary film about the Japanese rock and roll band Carol.
Hisashi Hasegawa: Nen Neko Rin Rin (1981), Tomato Pin (1982). He is the trash film master in Japan.
Shiroyasu Suzuki: His diary films are great!
Yuri Obitani: Hair Opera (1993), Taiwan Shonen (1994)
Masanobu Nakamura: Commemorative Photo (1978), Omen (1988). Even if everyone denies it, I like his films!
Michio Takeuchi: Otaru (19??), Free Broadcasting for Mako Ishino (19??). It’s almost impossible to see, very long live screening and performance films. Excellent!
Toshio Matsumoto: Shura (1971)
Thank you for reading the 56th issue of Film Show. Sex as existence.
If you appreciate what we do, please consider donating via Ko-fi or becoming a Patreon patron. Film Show is dedicated to forever providing its content for free, but please know that all our writers are paid for the work they do. All donations will be used for paying writers, and if we get enough money, Film Show will be able to publish issues more frequently.