Masami Teraoka’s art confronts the world’s horrors with opulent beauty and surgical satire. Across six decades, he has wielded painting as a form of defiance—melding Eastern and Western iconography to expose hypocrisy, mourn injustice, and demand reckoning. Whether depicting the AIDS crisis through ukiyo-e parody or casting Renaissance-style saints in tales of modern corruption, his work insists that no aesthetic tradition is too sacred to subvert, and no political wound too dangerous to depict.

This film explores how Masami’s paintings function as visual protests—unflinching responses to the most urgent and often suppressed issues of our time: religious abuse, environmental collapse, censorship, cultural imperialism, gender inequality, and the slow, deliberate erosion of civil rights. These aren’t distant themes of a bygone era. As authoritarian ideologies reassert themselves globally, Masami’s work feels less like archival commentary and more like prophecy.

Masami’s layered compositions don’t just ask to be viewed—they demand to be decoded. Beneath the gilded surfaces lie stories of resistance, grief, survival, and complicity. Through surreal juxtapositions and historical echoes, he collapses time, making visible the continuum of violence and the cyclical nature of power. Through Masami’s vision, we’re asked to look again—at history, at ourselves, and at what we allow to go unseen.

Directors’ Notes

We are longtime admirers of Masami Teraoka’s work. His fearless, layered storytelling through art speaks directly to our own creative values and growing anxieties about the world we’re living in. As artists ourselves, we recognize the cost of creative dissent—how institutions, market forces, and political tides can elevate or erase a voice. David understands firsthand how academia and money can shape an artist’s survival. Barbarella watched in disbelief as women’s rights regressed in real time—most starkly with the overturning of Roe v. Wade during this film’s early production.

Like Masami, we’re now asking questions we never had to ask before: Could the work we make become dangerous? Could we be punished for what we say?

This story is personal because Masami’s battles mirror our own. His paintings do more than reflect the times—they challenge power, preserve memory, and model the kind of courage that feels increasingly urgent.  We approach this story not as observers, but as artists standing on the same fault lines, facing similar risks. Our aim is not just to honor Masami’s legacy, but to make a film that confronts this moment with the same clarity and conviction he brings to every canvas.