‘Caterpillar’: Shozin Fukui’s trippy nightmare
Experimental cinema has always been one of the most important spheres in film history, facilitating the medium’s most vital evolutions. Over the years, different countries inevitably developed their own cinematic traditions, but one body of work that always managed to stand out from the rest was Japanese experimental cinema. Within that domain, the boldness of Shozin Fukui has led to the creation of some of the most interesting filmic visions.
Alongside other pioneers such as Takashi Ito, Fukui conducted a radical reimagination of the frameworks of Japanese cinema during a period of rapid sociopolitical change. Featuring striking imagery and unconventional approaches to the various elements of filmmaking, Fukui’s oeuvre is not just important because of its experimental praxis but also because it represents a deviation from the film industry’s normative principles.
While Fukui’s shorts are endlessly fascinating, the film that actually attracted global attention was his 1991 cyberpunk masterpiece 964 Pinocchio. Like most of his other works, 964 Pinocchio resists rigid categorisations and operates on completely different registers of reality that consume the audience. However, even more radical than Fukui’s aforementioned feature is his 1988 short Caterpillar which is bound to be one of the most bizarre films you’ll ever see.
Made during his time as a production worker on Shinya Tsukamoto’s seminal body horror gem Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Caterpillar exhibits some of the same frenetic energy but in very different ways. Deliberately hallucinatory in nature, the short documents unsettling images of a city that is haunted by industrialisation and a weird caterpillar figure. The visual power of Fukui’s imagination is on full display, but it’s the incredibly disturbing soundtrack – which can only be described as the sound of psychosis – that is the protagonist here.
“I made all those sound effects myself. There was just a feeling of making music going into that part. It was purely an experiment,” Fukui told Midnight Eye. While talking about his intentions, he added: “I would say that exploring extreme mental conditions is my subject matter. It’s very difficult to explain with words. The mental part is beyond the physical part. Sometimes, the mental is stronger. That’s what I’m curious about.”
The filmmaker continued: “The moment when the mind overwhelms the body is the most interesting to me. This moment is kind of psychic. My goal is to try to describe this moment. In this moment, a new power erupts. This power I call psychic. For this moment to happen requires a strong trigger, which could come from the body and mind being subjected to forceful technology. When the psychic power takes over, it breaks through the physical limits. To describe that moment and process, I use the images of puking.”
Caterpillar is a visceral experience that grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go, firmly attaching itself to your brain in a hostile way. Watch the film below.
