JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film & Video 1955 - Now
sharon hayashi
shh
Wed Nov 3 13:02:01 EST 2004
This Weekend - Friday NOVEMBER 5th & Saturday NOVEMBER 6th
JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film & Video 1955 - Now
Film Studies Center, University of Chicago
5811 S. Ellis Ave.
Cobb Hall, Room 307
773.702.8596
The playful insistence and explosive subversion of Japanese
experimental film traditions remain neglected terrain for North
American audiences. In an effort to globalize what has often been a
primarily Western understanding of postwar experimentalism, "JPEX:
Japanese Experimental Film and Video 1955 - Now" documents the radical
medium of postwar Japanese experimental film, video, and animation at
its fiftieth anniversary.?
Although its goals are not specifically retrospective or historical,
JPEX nonetheless offers the most comprehensive survey of Japanese
experimental cinema in North America since at least the early 1980's.?
To provide a public forum for the discussion of the political,
aesthetic, and social interventions made by these visual works, the
JPEX screenings? will be followed by a roundtable panel discussion on
Saturday, November 6th.?
The roundtable discussion and all screenings will take place at the
University of Chicago Film Studies Center in Cobb 307.? For more
information, please see
http://filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu/navevents.html
Friday NOVEMBER 5th, 7pm Screening??? EXPANDED VISIONS
In Expanded Visions, the first program of the JPEX series, the
extraordinary canon of mid-century Japanese formal experimentation
comprised by well-recognized experimentalists such as Ito Takashi,
Matsumoto Toshio, Nakajima Takashi, Okuyama Jun'ichi, and Yamazaki
Hiroshi, is expanded and enriched in the light of the powerful and
pioneering work of feminist filmmaker Idemitsu Mako, animator Tanaami
Keiichi, and contemporary contributors to formal play. Collectively,
these filmmakers probe the possibilities of cinematic representation,
linear temporality, repetition, sensory overload, forgetfulness,
perception, and delusive madness.
Total Running Time: 98m
MATSUMOTO Toshio? Shiki Soku Ze Ku, 1975, 8m, color, 16mm, sound
IDEMITSU Mako? At Santa Monica 1, 1974, 6m, color, 16mm, sound
OKUYAMA Jun'ichi? Le Cinema, 1975, 5m, b&w, 16mm, sound
OKUYAMA Jun'ichi? My Movie Melodies, 1980, 6m, b&w, 16mm, sound
OKAMOTO Akio? Snarl-Up!!!, 2001, 8m, color, video, sound
YAMAZAKI Hiroshi? Heliography, 1979, 6m, color, 16mm, sound
NAKAJIMA Takashi? Cessna, 1974, 20m, color, 8mm on video, silent
FURUKAWA Taku Coffee Break, 1977, 3 m, color, 16mm, sound
MATSUMOTO Toshio? Atman? 1975, 11m, color, 16mm, sound
ITO Takashi? Spacy, 1981, 10m, color/b&w, 16mm, sound
YAMAZAKI Hiroshi? Observation, 1975, 10m, b&w, 16mm, sound
TANAAMI Keiichi? Why? Remix, 2002, 5m, color, video, sound
Saturday NOVEMBER 6th
3:30pm Screening???? SEX UNDERGROUND
The films and videos in Sex Underground rebel against workaday
conventions of gender, sexuality, the body, and subjectivity.?
Utilizing theatrical traditions and a powerful performative agency,
film and video makers such as Ito Takashi, Nakajima Takash, Donald
Richie, Terayama Shuji and Imaizumi Koichi subvert and then reconfigure
sexual difference, queer subjectivity, and gender performativity.? From
Idemitsu Mako's lighthearted invocation of traditional gender roles and
Tamano Shin'ichi's perversely magical realism to Saito Yukie's
terrifying and oppressive exploration of male-female power dynamics,
the films and videos in Sex Underground collectively suggest
unexpected, yet open pathways for desire and subjectivity.
Total Running Time: 108m
RICHIE Donald? Atami Blues, 1962, 20m, b&w, 16mm, sound
IDEMITSU Mako? Inner-Man, 1972, 4m, color, 16mm, sound
ITO Takashi? Apparatus M, 1996, 6m, color, 16mm, silent
KAWANAKA Nobuhiro? Feedback, 1973, 8m, b&w, 16mm, sound
IDEMITSU Mako? Baby Variations, 1974, 9m, color, 16mm, sound
TAMANO Shin'ichi? Kosoku Bozu, 2002, 11m, color, in Japanese, 8mm on
video, sound
NAKAJIMA Takashi? Investigation, 1984, 3m, color, 8mm on video, sound
IIMURA Takahiko? Ai (Love), 1962, 10m, b&w, Super-8 on16mm, sound by
Yoko Ono
IMAIZUMI Koichi, I Want You to Kiss Me?? 2004, 5m, color, video, sound
KIMURA Takashi, Utsu-musume Sayuri, 2003, 4m, color, video, sound
UEHARA Miho? Awanono, 2003, 3m, color, 8mm on video, sound
SAITO Yukie? Benighted But Not Begun, 1994, 22m, b&w, 16mm, sound
TERAYAMA Shuji? An Introduction to Cinema for Boys and Young Men, 1974,
3m, color, 16mm TRIPLE PROJECTION
Saturday NOVEMBER 6th
7pm Screening??? NARRATIVE TRANSGRESSIONS: MATSUMOTO TOSHIO
In 1955, Matsumoto Toshio's now lost collaboration with avant-garde
composer Takemitsu Toru, Silver Wheels, helped inaugurate post-war
Japanese experimental film.? Since then, Matsumoto has embodied the
extraordinary adaptability of Japanese experimental video and film with
a career that spans work in criticism, theatre, documentary, and
experimental and independent filmmaking.? In this program, we pay
special homage to Matsumoto's oeuvre with a screening of his draq-queen
melodrama, Funeral Parade of Roses, a unique film that borrows the yet
unpoliticized figure of male homosexuality in 1969 Japan to launch a
potent critique of Japanese society at the apex of high-growth
economics. Funeral Parade is an amazing film in its humorous
amalgamation of documentary, narrative, and visual experimentation, and
is increasingly recognized as one of the classics of Japan's New Wave
cinema. The film is followed by a triple-screen projection, For My
Crushed Right Eye, the first multi-projection piece made in Japan.
Together the films suggest the importance of sexuality, of fantasy, and
of displacement for Matsumoto's politics of social critique.
Total Running Time: 132m
Expansion, 1972, 14m, color, 16mm, sound
Funeral Parade of Roses, 1969, 105m, b&w, 16mm, in Japanese with
English subtitles, sound
For My Crushed Right Eye,? 1968, 13m, color, sound, 16mm TRIPLE
PROJECTION
Saturday NOVEMBER 6th, 9:30pm? ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Please join us for a roundtable discussion on the JPEX programs and
Japanese experimental cinema after Saturday's screenings.? Participants
will include: Tatsu Aoki (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Tom
Gunning (University of Chicago), Akira Lippett (University of
California, Irvine), Helen Mirra (University of Chicago), Taro
Nettleton (University of Rochester), and Michael Raine (University of
Chicago).? Moderated by Jonathan M. Hall & Michelle Puetz.
Program notes and curation by Jonathan M. Hall & Michelle Puetz.? JPEX:
Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955-Now has been made possible
with the generous support of the Image Forum Archive Tokyo, the
University of Chicago Fine Arts Fund, the University of Chicago Norman
Wait Harris Memorial Fund, the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies,
the Experimental Film Club, the Lesbian and Gay Studies Project, the
Film Studies Center, and the University of California Irvine.?
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