UK Premeire

*Director Ryuichi Hiroki will be in attendance

Short Synopsis

A documentary focussing on a strain of this erotic art form peculiar to Japan known as kinbaku, it features three of the country’s leading practitioners of this erotic art form in action, as they perform elaborately binding their models’ bodies using multiple pieces of rope for S&M specialist stage shows, magazine photo shoots and videos specialising in S&M.

Review

Ryuichi Hiroki began his filmmaking career in the 80s directing pink films, including several SM-heavy titles made under the pseudonym Go Ijuin. He later revisited this world with a comedy drama about an impotent fetish writer and his dissatisfied wife in I am an SM Writer (2000).

With BAKUSHI, a term meaning “rope master”, he returns to throw light on this shadowy subject once more. A documentary focusing on a strain of this erotic art form peculiar to Japan known as kinbaku; it features three of the country’s leading practitioners of this erotic art form in action, as they elaborately bind their models’ bodies using multiple pieces of rope for S&M specialist stage shows, magazine photo shoots and videos specialising in S&M.

Both the models and the rope artists are interviewed, helping to give an insight into the history of S&M practises in Japan, where after the War pulp magazines like “Kitan Club” and “Fuzoku Kitan” began to emerge, and rope-play spectacles were soon introduced into more mainstream erotic journals and a variety of other media such as film (Pink Films, Roman Porno, Adult Videos), novels, illustrations and erotic Manga. The results are strikingly stylised, painstakingly realised and oddly elucidating. Needless to say, for adult viewers only!

Jasper Sharp