Silence Has No Wings

Kazuo Kuroki's 1966 Japanese film begins with a rare butterfly caught in Nagasaki. A caterpillar is carried northward from hand to hand, and along that journey as far as Hokkaido a series of unconnected scenes opens. The structure is episodic. At each stop a brief view opens onto the life of people in post-war Japan; the butterfly is the only thing linking them and there is almost no plot. Kuroki came from documentary and uses that experience inside the narrative; some passages are fiction and others look like real footage. The film stood outside the studio conventions of its time and was seen for a long while only in a narrow circle. Who it's for: those who like Japanese cinema of the sixties and experimental structures. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a central character; the film keeps changing subject.