I first met Yutaka Tsuchiya in 1999 when I interviewed him on the release of "Atarashii Kamisama (The New God)," his documentary centering on a rightist punk band and its charismatic lead singer, Karin Amamiya. Despite his left-leaning politics, Tsuchiya was anything but the rigid ideologue; in fact, the movie was a record of his growing infatuation with the neo-nationalistic Amamiya — and they ended up marrying after its release.
Tsuchiya's investigation of cultural and social alienation continued with "Peep 'TV' Show" (2004), a documentary-flavored drama about an Internet voyeur's encounter with a Goth girl that obsesses him in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The film screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and elsewhere abroad, but got only a limited release in Japan.
His latest feature, "Thallium Shojo no Dokusatsu Nikki (GFP Bunny)," shares thematic similarities with his previous films, such as its teenage heroine's intense engagement with online media, but their political concerns have given way to a focus on recent advances in biological sciences that are changing the definition of what it means to be human.
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