The Beauty of Beauty. Caravage I. Realism or the culmination of crime (1974 1977) dir. Yoshishige Yoshida

Until 1973 Kijû Yoshida had made sixteen feature films in thirteen years. Having just completed his trilogy on Japanese history Eros + Massacre (1969), Heroic Purgatory (1970) and Coup dEtat (1971) in which he achieves the form of artistic independence he was striving for and creates his own radical visual and narrative style, the stress of fundraising, producing, writing and directing at the same time takes its toll on him. Yoshida breaks down and falls seriously ill. He has to undergo surgery, but recovers only slowly. In this situation Yoshida receives and accepts the offer of a Japanese TV channel to produce a documentary series on art entitled The Beauty of Beauty, which will be broadcasted every Saturday night on Channel 12 from 1974 to 1978. Yoshida left Japan in the fall of 1973 for Europe and works on this series for the next four years producing 94 episodes in total, a project of a truly monumental scale, which can only be compared to the television work of Rossellini after he abandoned cinema.