The revolutionary subject: Masao Adachi and Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War

Abstract

This article’s title originates from a line spoken by a revolutionary towards the end of the film Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War. Like the film born of the collaboration of politically radical Japanese experimental filmmakers and revolutionaries, this examination concerns revolution itself as a film subject. More specifically, it interrogates this film as a revolutionary tool and the limitations thereof, as well as revolution and revolutionaries captured in the film and the revolutionary as embodied in the film’s maker Masao Adachi. What it produces might be termed ‘the revolutionary subject’.