An avant-garde of the mind: Ōe Masanori and psychedelic cinema in the global Sixties

The essay examines how filmmaker Ōe Masanori used his experiences with the psychedelic counterculture in both the United States and Japan to create films that aimed to change viewers' perceptions of themselves and their world. After producing films in the U.S. counterculture for five years, Ōe returned to Japan in 1969 and became involved in emerging domestic movements. The author argues that Ōe intentionally incorporated his understanding of psychedelics into his filmmaking techniques, crafting a form of cinema designed to alter consciousness and reshape how audiences understood their identity and relationship to society during the late 1960s.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay explores the relationship between cinema and the psychedelic counterculture in the United States and Japan through the life and work of the filmmaker Ōe Masanori. After spending five years producing films within and about the counterculture in the U.S., he returned to Japan in 1969 and quickly became involved in the emerging movements at home. The author argues that Ōe incorporated his understanding of psychedelics into his filmmaking to create forms of cinema that could alter how viewers understood themselves and their relationship to the world in the late 1960s.