Directed by Ko Hiroh.
Japan, 1969, 16mm, black & white, 67 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

With Planet Film Archive Founding Director Yasui Yoshio in person

The Whiplashed Ones uses a riveting experimental mode to explore a dizzying network of issues connected to chronic symptoms affecting Osaka taxi drivers. This major work of postwar activist independent film deploys a radical visual style that shuttles between X-rays and Osaka’s rough urban map, seeking out visualizations of a many-layered trauma that is physical and social and inscribed into the city’s transit structure. The film is one of the central works of Ko Hiroh (1938-2024), a filmmaker who left his mark on major turning points in Japanese cinema but is almost unknown outside of Japan. As a student in Nihon University’s film school in the 1950s he cofounded the first student experimental film group in Japan, kickstarting a new era of experimental and activist cinema. Working as an influential TV director and producer Ko continued to direct independent experimental documentary and founded the influential CO2 film festival. Ko passed away in 2024, and this screening reminds us of his enduring belief in cinema as an agent of change— not only of society, but of our sensorium.

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Harvard Film Archive Planet at 50 special film screenings co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute