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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