Experimental film, often used interchangeably with the term ‘avant-garde’ film or ‘underground’ film in Japan, has typically been associated with the emergence of radical and creative filmmaking practices in the 1960s. Coinciding with a particular phase of cinematic modernism across the globe, experimental films in Japan tested the political and formal boundaries of the cinematic medium. The role of cinema in political activism of the time was closely correlated with the generational sense of frustration and betrayal engendered after the perceived failure of demonstrations against the renewal of the Japan–US Mutual Security Pact in 1960. The anger and disillusionment shared by the youth were the primary motives behind the so-called Japanese New Wave movement over the same period.