1971 • Japan • Directed by Masao Adachi & Haruhiko Arai

High-school students Yasuko, Yôichi, Kôichi and Bill want to escape from their overwhelming sense of alienation from the world around them and indulge in group sex to explore whether they can forge their own path liberated from a corrupt adult society. Yasuko is driven by the goading encouragement of her peers to feel what it is like to be a prostitute, with sex reduced to a mere economic transaction. She sets out an odyssey of self-exploration in search of complete satiation. The most cryptic and formally radical pink film from the most politically radical director ever to work in the field: GUSHING PRAYER deploys actual suicide notes and a haunting guitar refrain by folk musician Minami Masato to express the spiritual and political left vacuum in the wake of the failed student movements of the 1960s. The cinematography by Itô Hideo, who also shot Ôshima Nagisha’s IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), captures an intriguing melding of the documentary with the cinematic.