About the Film | UQ: Utopian Queerness

UQ in 30 Seconds

The film at a glance

Gagaku, rap, contemporary dance, and the colours of Buddhist art. In a world where antiquity and the present fold into each other, bodies assigned “roles” by gender and age reclaim their own movement. A 24-minute experimental film that tells its story through bodies and colour, with almost no explanatory dialogue.

Characters in white, indigo and orange walking across a meadow under a blue sky, with a flute player behind them — Shiro, Ai and Daidai cross the meadow to the sound of a flute

Where This Film Stands

Why this film

Shiro in white robes against a blue sky and clouds — Shiro against the sky

Japan, too, has made films about queer lives. For a long time, the suffering of minorities was often used as an emotional device to move audiences to tears. In recent years, more light-hearted entertainment films have appeared, which is a welcome change in itself. Yet many of them have lost what lies at the core of being queer.

Neither merely joyful nor merely sad. Films that portray the ways of living that grow precisely from being a minority, carrying pain while revealing strength and beauty, are still rare.

Made and performed by queer people themselves, UQ is an attempt to set a single band of colour into that gap. Here, queer bodies are neither objects of pity nor brightness made for consumption. Knowing pain, they stand on screen as subjects who sing, dance, play, and shine.

Three Colours to Know Before You Watch

Before you watch

Key 1

Ungen: a grammar of colour

Ungen is a pattern in Buddhist art that lines up bands of different colours in steps, so that together they read as a gradient. Unlike a Western gradient, where colours blend smoothly, each colour here keeps its own edge beside the next. The film reads this as a metaphor for queer ways of living together without erasing difference. Watch for the order of colours in the costumes and on screen. The colour bands on this page follow the same idea.

The title 悠久 brushed in ink on old vermilion-lacquered wood — Title shot: vermilion wood and ink

Key 2

Butch Buddha: a pun, and completely serious

Few people in Japan call themselves Buddhist, yet Buddhist motifs run through everyday life. What happens when a queer body quotes this “Japanese culture”, including the fusion of Buddhism and Shinto? It is funny, and the questions run deep. And across Shiro’s face, mid-song, a shadow of melancholy passes. Lightness and shade: this doubleness is the heart of the film. Quietly, behind it, sit the political and religious issues that queer people in Japan face.

Shiro as a drag king in fur and chains, cupping an ear — Shiro / Butch Buddha raps

Key 3

Between serious and unserious

Films that explain gender and sexuality to society, and films that portray grief, are certainly needed. This film chose instead the queer vitality found in play and laughter. Rather than being consumed as a theme, I hope that after watching you feel somewhere in your body: “this way of living is kind of great.” Nothing would make me happier.

A burning human-shaped sculpture among rice stalks, overlaid with the brushed title 悠久 — A burning figure, rice stalks and flame