Second Run

"Filmed in monochrome CinemaScope, it still looks extraordinary [...] surely one of the greatest ever screen performances by a child actor... visually beautiful, emotionally rich epic" 5-star review of Kachyňa’s LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC! @theartsdesk theartsdesk.com/film/blu-ray-l…

"Remains one of Buñuel's most enjoyably macabre oddities[...]a perfect balance between morbid wit and blood-stained drama[...]Buñuel's is one of the few truly individual visions in cinema" CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ review Dec 1960 Monthly Film Bulletin.Blu-ray 8 June

Gabriel Mascaro's excellent new film THE BLUE TRAIL is in UK cinemas now. Two of Mascaro's earlier sensual and provocative works, DIVINE LOVE and NEON BULL are available on Second Run. secondrundvd.com/release_divine… secondrundvd.com/release_neon.h… metfilmstudio.com/distribution/t…

"[Kachyňa] translates the blurred lines between reality and fantasy [...] finds joy in Olrich's fantasies as elaborately visualized by Kachyňa's cinematographer Jaromír Šofr and designer Leos Karen" @dvdcompare look at LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC! dvdcompare.net/review.php?rid…

Luis Buñuel and friends... on the set of 1955 film THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (Ensayo de un crimen)

"One of the great things about EXTREME PRIVATE EROS is that it’s about the most fundamental question of documentary-making, namely when do you stop filming? ...[Hara] is a genuinely unique, fearless talent, and the proof is right here" @TGS_TheGeekShow thegeekshow.co.uk/extreme-privat…

"Remains in a category of its own: deeply personal, unethical, and something you cannot look away from" Matthew Tilt's 'What's In a Scene' examines Hara's EXTREME PRIVATE EROS: LOVE SONG 1974 whatsinascene.substack.com/p/non-canonica…

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 dir. Kazuo Hara Media Format: Blu-ray Studio: Second Run Release date: 20 April 2026 diabolikdvd.com/product/extrem… DiabolikDVD. com @diabolikdvd @SecondRunDVD @kazu19451 @shin_kazuohara

"Ethical-boundary-traversing brilliance is on display in this queasily private diary film... unlike much else in the documentary canon, making this a vital release from the ever-adventurous Second Run label" @SightSoundmag Watchlist: 7 films for 7 days on EXTREME PRIVATE EROS

OUT TODAY! Kazuo Hara's raw and uncompromising EXTREME PRIVATE EROS: LOVE SONG 1974 - explodes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking. secondrundvd.com/release_extrem… @AmazonUK tinyurl.com/mrx8ajju @hmvtweets @FOPPofficial @RarewavesCom @zavvi @orbitdvd @diabolikdvd

"FUGITIVE IMAGES won’t be for everyone, but it is something that everyone should see...the vision and themes within are vital and provoking, prompting us to think about community and sociality" @musiquemachine1 review our Andrea Luka Zimmerman collection musiquemachine.com/reviews/fugiti…

Kazuo Hara’s "Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974" Blu-ray - Miyuki Takeda, Miyuki Takeda, Sachiko Kobayashi @SecondRunDVD UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/AS… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/posts/kazuo-ha… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film1/… From the director of the renowned, controversial documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, Kazuo Hara’s intensely personal - and equally controversial - film Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is a detached, radical examination of the interplay between the director and subject. In order to maintain contact with his former partner, Miyuki, Hara shot this raw, intimate film as a way to both maintain a connection with her and to make sense of their complex relationship. Shocking and uncompromising, Extreme Private Eros explodes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking to create a stunningly candid portrait of an independent woman living on her own terms, and Hara’s own struggle to accept her rejection. *** Kazuo Hara's Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 Order stands as one of the most audaciously intimate and ethically provocative documentaries in Japanese cinema history. Running approximately 92 minutes (IMDb lists the running time as 98-minutes) in grainy black-and-white 16mm, the film chronicles the post-breakup life of Hara’s ex-partner, the 26-year-old radical feminist and single mother Miyuki Takeda. The result is less a conventional portrait than a fractured “love song” that collapses boundaries between filmmaker and subject, observer and participant, private eros and public politics. Stylistically, the film rejects polished documentary conventions in favor of a home-video rawness that feels both accidental and deliberate. Long, claustrophobic takes, frequent sound-image desynchronization, and discontinuous editing create a sense of emotional volatility and temporal fragmentation. Thematically, Extreme Private Eros is saturated with the tensions of 1970s Japanese feminism, particularly the Ribu (Women’s Liberation) movement. Takeda was not merely a subject but an active participant in Ribu activism - opposing government attempts to restrict abortion rights under the Eugenic Protection Law and advocating for women’s bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, and rejection of traditional family structures. Takeda emerges as a complex, contradictory figure: fiercely independent and magnetically charismatic one moment, petty, neglectful, or verbally cruel the next (shaming her infant son for resembling his father, for instance.) Extreme Private Eros marks a pivotal shift toward the personal as political. It refuses easy resolution or moral clarity, leaving viewers unsettled by Takeda’s incomplete self-actualization, Hara’s unresolved longing, and the film’s own complicity in the spectacle of female rebellion. Decades later, it remains a landmark of reflexive, essayistic documentary filmmaking: a cinematic open wound that exposes the violence of privacy, the politics of the bedroom, and the high human cost of radical independence. For anyone interested in the evolution of personal cinema, feminist media history, or the blurred line between art and life, it is essential - and still profoundly disturbing - viewing. Second Run’s Blu-ray is the definitive edition of one of documentary cinema’s most disturbing and boundary-shattering works. By presenting a respectful yet revealing HD transfer that never sanitizes the film’s technical “flaws,” and pairing it with intelligent contextual supplements, the label has delivered a package that respects both the movie’s radical spirit and the needs of modern viewers. For anyone serious about personal documentary, Japanese independent cinema, or the ethics of nonfiction filmmaking, this disc is indispensable - raw, unflinching, and long overdue.

"For anyone serious about personal documentary, Japanese independent cinema, or the ethics of nonfiction filmmaking, this disc is indispensable - raw, unflinching, and long overdue." @DVDBeaver rave on Kazuo Hara's uncompromising EXTREME PRIVATE EROS dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film1/…

"A staggering, uncomfortable, and deeply human collision between the filmmaker and his subject that transforms a breakup into a radical manifesto of personal liberation [...] a work of profound, uncomfortable beauty" EXTREME PRIVATE EROS @CinemasOnline cinemas-online.co.uk/reviews/69e0eb…

NEW RELEASE! On Blu-ray May 25... Luis Buñuel's darkly comic psychodrama THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ. A key work of his Mexican period, available for the 1st time in UK tinyurl.com/3fj77hdp @AmazonUK tinyurl.com/nmu4scmw @RarewavesCom @diabolikdvd @hmvtweets

Second Run returns to childhood with LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC! (review): cineventures.blogspot.com/2026/04/second… @dvdcompare @SecondRunDVD

TIMELESS FILM FESTIVAL WARSAW 17 - 27 April. Featuring retrospectives of the works of Peter Weir, Barbara Sass, Václav Vorlíček and Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Buñuel in Mexico, Giallo, US Black cinema... and a very special strand dedicated to Second Run! timelessfilmfestival.pl/en/sekcja/seco…

"Arguably the most super of the superprodukcja [...] rousing action, memorable characters and spectacular visuals, all of which it excels at." Graham Williamson reviews Aleksander Ford's epic KNIGHTS OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER @TGS_TheGeekShow thegeekshow.co.uk/knights-of-the…

"An authentic radical of documentary cinema. Both of these amazing, if painful, films ask deep questions about sexual identity, the family, individual freedoms, guilt, responsibility..." @LondonGrip on Hara's EXTREME PRIVATE EROS and EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY londongrip.co.uk/2026/04/extrem…

"An extraordinary and ambitious melding of reality, memory and fantasy... Bravo once again to Second Run for this release... Highly recommended" An excellent, and very personal, appreciation of Kachyňa's LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC! at Cine Outsider cineoutsider.co.uk/long_live_the_…