Offscreen

School Girl Guerrilla
Masao Adachi / JP / 1969 / 73'
35mm / VOST FR OND
Three high school girls plot to steal the school’s diplomas and sabotage their graduation ceremony. Using their charm to strip soldiers from their uniforms and weapons, they retreat into the mountains to regroup, making hostages and slaves of intruders. While negotiations with the school are set to begin, the group’s internal strains begin to take their toll on the operation.
Following his post-surrealist experiments and theoretical research, Adachi turns the page once again with this incursion into the Pink/rebel teenage girl trope, a genre which will become more popular in the years to come. Out of all of Adachi’s films, "School Girl Guerrilla" is the one the resembles Wakamatsu’s work the most, the latter being the producer of this film. The style and the black and white cinematography with occasional hints of colour (used mainly to highlight nudity) are noteworthy elements, as well as the latent political critique which presaged the student revolution’s tilt towards armed conflict.