Cleopatra is a very much unknown Japanese anime from 1970 made by “The Godfather of Manga” Osamu Tezuka along with director Eiichi Yamamoto. It has never been released in the UK. Cleopatra was a part of a series of adult anime films called Animerama, made at Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Production animation studio from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Cleopatra takes a look inside Tezuka’s sketchbook with a series of doodles that touch upon the history of Cleopatra but include digressions into science fiction, broad (and often tasteless) comedy, many whiplash stylistic breaks, and blunt sexuality.
At Barbican book tickets
Cleopatra (Osamu Tezuka & Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan)
A weird and wild tale in which three intergalactic travellers from the distant future are whisked back to the court of the ancient Egyptian queen by time machine to intervene in an alien plan to destroy mankind by altering the course of human history.
112 mins, 1970
