FRIED BANANAS presents: BELLADONA of SADNESS (1973)
Accessibility
Screening upstairs at The Ship & Mitre pub. Lovely art-deco room, but there are steps to overcome.
About this event
Fried Bananas is a cinema club. We show fried films in Liverpool. No pretension. Just proper juicy cinema and a good pint. . Our first series is Mellow Yellow — three films from the golden age of psychedelic animation, when studios were making adult cartoons that were strange, explicit, politically raw and visually unlike anything before or since. Last Wednesday of the month, June through August 2026. £5 — book to guarantee your spot, or pay on the door, same price. .
film: BELLADONA of SADNESS (Eiichi Yamamoto · 1973 · 86 min)
In 1973 a Japanese animation studio made a film so extreme it bankrupted them. Then it disappeared for 40 years.
Belladona of Sadness is an adult animated musical about a medieval peasant woman who is violated by a feudal lord, abandoned, and turns to the devil for power. Told largely in extraordinary watercolour still paintings, it’s visually unlike anything else ever made — part prog-rock album cover, part illuminated manuscript, part fever dream. It is also genuinely difficult viewing in places. Letterboxd calls it a feminist masterpiece. Letterboxd also calls it exploitative. Both camps have a point. We think it’s worth seeing and talking about.
Content note: sexual violence, nudity, explicit imagery.
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