Katsu Kanai

was a Japanese experimental and avant-garde film director. The Harvard Film Archive has called him "one of the most vital and inventive filmmakers in the history of Japanese underground film".

Career Born the son of a farmer in Kanagawa Prefecture, Kanai graduated from the College of Art of Nihon University before finding work at Daiei Film. He later became a freelance cinematographer and founded Kanai Productions in 1968. His 2003 work, Super Documentary: The Avant-Garde Senjutsu, was awarded the FIPRESCI award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Kanai has been the subject of retrospectives at Oberhausen, the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival, and the Harvard Film Archive.

Selected filmography The Deserted Archipelago (1969) Good-Bye (1971) The Kingdom (1973) The Stormy Times (1991) Super Documentary: The Avant-Garde Senjutsu (2003)