Kei Fujiwara


Kei Fujiwara is a Japanese actress, cinematographer, writer, film director, and theater director. Her first role was in the American film The Neptune Factor, but she is perhaps best known for starring in the Japanese cult film, . More recently she has devoted her time to writing and directing, and is known for her surreal and violent experimental films as well as her experimental theater company Organ Vital.

Biography

Fujiwara was born into a poor family in a rural part of Kumamoto in 1957, and moved to Tokyo to pursue a career in theater. Playwright Jūrō Kara wrote roles for her to act in his plays and eventually became her mentor. She spent years creating underground theater companies, and collaborated with Shinya Tsukamoto on the plays and 8mm films he created. For Tsukamoto's film , she participated both in front of the camera as the unnamed Girlfriend character, as well as behind the camera as the prop artist and one of the cinematographers.
After the production of Tetsuo, she returned to underground theater and working with Jūrō Kara. She also formed the Organ Vital company, which produced the play Organ and adapted the play into the film of the same name. Organ and her later 2005 film Ido never gained financial or critical success, but have become noted examples of the Japanese horror genre. She has continued producing theatre work through Organ Vital: a new "nomadic" theatre project called Ibunkitan debuted in 2019, and has been presented in shops, salons, and temples.
She lives in a remote part of the Nagano mountains.

Filmography

;As actress
;As director