Experimental Japanese Film at London's Zipangu Fest in November: Takashi Makino special + Nippon Re-Read charity event:

[Jasper Sharp]

An announcement that may be of interest to European-based KineJapanners. We at Zipangu Fest (http://zipangufest.com/) will be drip-feeding our programme over the next couple of weeks. Following on from last year's inaugural Zipangu Fest, the premier UK festival for cutting-edge Japanese film, documentary and animation, we've announced this year's dates, 18-24 November, at London's ICA - there's a number of other venues across the UK we're also talking to about hosting parts of the programme. We've got what I think is a really exciting lineup, and I can't wait to share it with you, but for now, I just wanted to post some details about some of the experimental films, namely a focus on Takashi Makino at the ICA as part of a programme called Enter the Cosmos, and a charity evening of experimental films (and some secret added extras) at the Cafe Oto in Dalston.Please help spread the word!
Thanks
Jasper


	
	
	



ZIPANGU
FEST TO HOST FILMS BY STAR OF JAPAN’S CONTEMPORARY EXPERIMENTAL
SCENE TAKASHI MAKINO, AND OTHERS





Four
films by the leading light of Japan’s contemporary experimental
scene, Takashi Makino, will be screened at this year’s Zipangu Fest
(18-24 November 2011). Three of Makino’s abstract visual odysseys –
with soundtracks by avant garde musicians Jim O’Rourke and
Machinefabriek – will be shown at London’s Institute
of Contemporary Arts on
Saturday 19 November as part of a programme entitled Enter
the Cosmos,
while the fourth will be screened at Zipangu Fest’s benefit night
for the Japan disaster fund to be held at Café
Oto in
Dalston on 22 November.

Come
and enjoy a fine spectrum of experimental moving image works from
Japan, for a good cause! The benefit
night at Café
Oto in
Dalston (18-22 Ashwin St, London E8 3DL) – Nippon
Re-read Radical Fragments and Abstractions from Japan I and II –
will also include experimental works from the late 1960s by Takahiko
Iimura and Toshio Matsumoto, as well as recent films by Tomonari
Nishikawa and Shiho Kano. Organised by Zipangu Fest’s Julian Ross,
the programme was curated by Aily Nash and Nine Eglantine
Yamamoto-Masson of Kinema
Nippon.

The
films in this two-part programme range from late 60s to contemporary
works. Although varying greatly in their formal and aesthetic
concerns, the works all rigorously reexamine the everyday through
their respective experiments and innovations in their medium.

Abstractions
of the mundane are seen in the graphic films in Programme I, which
deal directly with the materiality of their medium rather than
focusing on a visual referent. In White
Calligraphy Re-Read (1967),
Takahiko Iimura activates the Japanese characters of the Kojiki,
the earliest Japanese historical chronicle, by deconstructing text
into its constitutive graphic ciphers. These works,
including Lika (2007)
by Stom Sogo, and Still
in Cosmos (2009)
by Takashi Makino, direct the attention of the viewer to the
pictorial, emphasizing more painterly concerns, digital and celluloid
textures, the visceral correlation of sound and image, and of
flatness versus representational depth.





The
works in Programme II offer a poetic investigation into the
fragmentary experience of the quotidian by eschewing narrative and
rendering cultural images and references to unveil the uncanny within
the familiar. Tomonari Nishikawa’s in-camera manipulation of
bustling metro hubs in Shibuya-Tokyo and Tokyo-Ebisu(2010),
as well as Shiho Kano’s pensive meditations on quintessential
Japanese subjects form a counterpoint to Toshio Matsumoto’s
split-screen filmic hallucination of the late-60s underground, For
the Damaged Right Eye (1969).

	



Doors
open at 7.30pm. An admission fee of £5 will be charged on the door,
and all proceeds the benefit night will go towards Japan disaster
relief, via Japanisch-Deutsches
Zentrum Berlin.

More
details of the event can be found
at http://zipangufest.com/events/2011/nippon-re-read-radical-fragments-and-abstractions-from-japan-i-ii.


*** We hope to have an added something extra special for the night, to be announced shortly ***



Jasper Sharp: Writer & Film Curator Homepage
http://jaspersharp.com/

Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema
http://www.midnighteye.com

Zipangu Fest: Japanarchy in the UK
http://zipangufest.com/
 		 	   		  
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