Radiance have announced their January 2027 releases, giving us more Kon Ichikawa with his 1956 Punishment Room (even if I keep trying to call it Punishment Park but no, this is not Peter Watkins' albeit excellent film - though interestingly they've teased they are releasing films by Watkins' so we also may see Punishment Park next year).
Also, as their bi-annual and annual subscriptions are open, too, they've teased forthcoming 2027 releases, including a further Radical Japan boxset and films from Kinji Fukasaku and Seijun Suzuki. No hints yet what these are, but knowing they had been trying to get Visitor Q, failed, then picked it up; they had tried to get an HD copy of Pistol Opera, failed, could they have picked it up? As Fighting Elegy will be playing at the Japan House, could it be that? Mysteries abound.
More on Punishment Room:
A bored university student takes teenage rebellion to extremes, as he bullies classmates, scams his father out of his savings and rapes a college girl after spiking her drink. But as the number of targets grows, his victims band together and devise a plan for revenge, to be carried out in the titular punishment room. One of his darkest and most controversial films, Punishment Room saw director Kon Ichikawa (Ten Women in Black, Fires on the Plain) courting scandal with his unflinching depiction of abuse and rape among amoral post-war Japanese youth. Based on the story by future Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, this film was highly divisive upon its initial release, but perhaps more pertinent today than ever.
