Clara Spilliaert – Extreme Private Eros: Love Song

“Well, I think it’s a gre­at movie, and that you’re a docu­men­ta­ri­an atta­ched to your sub­ject; you’re per­so­nal­ly atta­ched to a woman, Miyuki Takeda, who can­not be kept or con­tai­ned. She’s inde­pen­dent, heed­less, doesn’t lis­ten or obey. She goes her own way. To take your own fee­lings and attach them to her – is it maso­chism or just fas­ci­na­ti­on? In any soci­e­ty, she would be a human bomb. To me, she’s just ama­zing. There’s nothing for her to grab onto, so she’s out in the world, rejec­ting aspects of what’s the­re. She’s having a baby total­ly by herself, gives birth unas­sisted. And then that final sce­ne has such ten­si­on: she’s wor­king as an ero­tic dan­cer, up onst­a­ge in front of an audien­ce, which is very ser­vi­le but also a mode of indi­vi­du­al expres­si­on. She’s very good, but it’s such a bizar­re situ­a­ti­on – to be loo­ked at, desi­red, recor­ded, but fier­ce­ly inde­pen­dent and apart. I’m impres­sed by her, may­be even afraid of her. I felt for you, see­ing through your lens, as you were in love with her.”
— Avant-gar­de film­ma­ker Ken Jacobs in con­ver­sa­ti­on with Kazuo Hara

“Even in this era of rea­li­ty tele­vi­si­on and docu-fic­ti­on, only rare­ly has a film­ma­ker tur­ned the came­ra upon their own pri­va­te life with such can­dor and inti­ma­cy as Kazuo Hara in the apt­ly named Extreme Private Eros. While osten­si­bly focu­sed upon his for­mer love Miyuki Takeda as she comes to terms with her own bis­exu­a­li­ty and inten­se dis­trust of tra­di­ti­o­nal fami­ly struc­tu­res, Extreme Private Eros also offers a port­rait of Hara as a jealous and resent­ful ex for whom fil­ming ser­ves as a kind of harsh self-the­ra­py. The film was, in fact, made in clo­se col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with Takeda, who invi­ted Hara to fol­low her to Okinawa whe­re she had gone with their child to live with her gir­lfriend. Takeda also asked Hara to docu­ment her giving birth unas­sisted to ano­ther child, the result of her rela­ti­ons­hip with a black American GI. Adding fur­ther emo­ti­o­nal com­plexi­ty to the pro­ject, Hara invi­ted his new gir­lfriend and pro­du­cer Sachiko Kobayashi to assist in the pro­duc­ti­on – resul­ting in one of the film’s most inde­li­ble sce­nes, a stin­g­ing con­ver­sa­ti­on bet­ween the two women about Hara as artist, lover and human being.”
— Haden Guest, Harvard Film Archive