school principal Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Blow the Night
(Yoru o Buttobas,
夜をぶっとばせ)

Director Chusei Sone – 1983 – Japan – Cert. 18 tbc – 108m

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Two teenage girls: a high school dropout who falls in with gangs, and 24 hours in the life of a girl who knows a band – part of the Chusei Sone Double Feature on Blu-ray from Monday, July 27th.

NSFW

This starts out with a rock drummer playing a fill, freeze-framed almost immediately to the title of the film, then his band The Street Sliders – whose record company Epic / Sony put ¥10m into the film’s budget – launching into a blistering Japanese Punk / R&B number with the cheerful chorus “Masturbation! Masturbation!” The film travels quite some distance with a cut to disaffected schoolgirl Takada (Namie Takada playing a younger version of herself) being told by the principal that she just needs to turn up for school while the exams are on. “Well-behaved student, my ass!” says a suited teacher after the girl’s been dismissed. “What kind of student dyes her hair and her nails red?”

Well, Namie is the kind that gets in at home without keys in the afternoon by negotiating an open window, changes schools every couple of years, and lives with her sister, grandma.… Read the rest

Blue Jean

Director – Georgia Oakley – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

A woman attempts to keep her LGBTQ lifestyle and her day job as a PE teacher separate, but has reckoned without the widespread anti-gay prejudice of late 1980s Thatcherite Britain – previews in UK cinemas from Monday, February 6thprior to release on Friday, February 10th

“Everything is political”, says her out and proud girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes) to Jean (Rosy McEwen), an LGBTQ woman who has to date managed to compartmentalise her existence so that work and private life are kept separate. She’d like to keep it that way too, because in her job as a teacher there’s an underlying assumption that heterosexuality is the norm. Which is fine if you happen to fit that model, less so if you don’t. Which Jean doesn’t. And a couple of factors are about to break down those carefully constructed compartments of her life.

It’s the late 1980s in Britain, and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is trying to push through Parliament what will eventually become the Local Government Act (1988). Section 28 (or Clause 28) of that Act prohibits councils in England, Wales and Scotland from promoting homosexuality, seen as a deviant behaviour which can be cured.… Read the rest