Scholarship on the avant-garde in Japanese cinema tends to focus on the 1960s. Many scholars believe that the avant-garde vanishes from Japanese cinema in the early 1970s. This study aims to disrupt such narratives with the example of filmmaker/theorist Matsumoto Toshio. Matsumoto is one of the key figures of the 1960s political avant-garde, and this study argues that his 1970s films should also be considered part of the avant-garde.