2026日本·德国纪录片
The 49th Year is an experimental long documentary film based on the letters of the Japanese anarchist and activist Toshihiko Kamata. He is serving a life sentence for his involvement in a series of bombing attacks by the Black Helmet group in 1971 in Tokyo. After the "Christmas Tree Attack" injured seven people including one policeman, he spent eight years on the run before he was arrested. After several years in the Tokyo Detention Center, he is currently serving his sentence in Miyagi prison in Sendai.
Kamata’s letters tell of his militant past, his everyday life in prison – a world invisible to us –and his observations of the situation in Japanese society and the Western world. They chronicle how labor, social relations and communication have changed over the past 40 years since his imprisonment. In his singular philosophical and poetic style, he shows us not only the harsh reality of prison life, but also shares his thoughts and dreams, a deep love of life and an unbroken enthusiasm for art, cinema and literature.
His philosophical and poetic reflections enter into a dialogue with observations of everyday life in urban and rural Japan – Tokyo, Sendai, Akita, Fukushima and Yamaguchi Prefecture – places and landscapes associated with his biography.
The film offers a rare intimate glimpse into a complex intellectual universe in isolation. The 49th Year examines the relationships between social invisibility and power, subjectivity and ideology, individual action and political change. Writing as a strategy of resistance, and a form of participation in society.