| DATE: | Tuesday, January 18, 2005 Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Tuesday, February 1, 2005 |
|---|---|
| TIME: | 7:30 p.m. |
| PLACE: | Pacific Film Archive Theater |
| FORMAT: | Film screenings |
| SPONSOR: | Pacific Film Archive; Image Forum Archive; University of California, Irvine; University of Chicago; Center for Japanese Studies; Institute for East Asian Studies |
After the resounding success of the first two programs of this historic touring series exploring the neglected terrain of Japanese experimental film traditions, we return with three additional programs. JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now documents the radical medium of postwar Japanese experimental film, video, and animation at its fiftieth anniversary.
Also visit http://www.humanities.uci.edu/ jpex/.
For information on ticket sales, please call 510.642.1412 or visit http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ pfa_programs/; for advance tickets (charge-by-phone), call 510.642.5249.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Apparatus M
The works in this program rebel against workaday conventions of gender, sexuality, and the body. Utilizing theatrical traditions and a powerful performative agency, film and video makers such as Takashi Ito, Takashi Nakajima, Shuji Terayama, and Koichi Imaizumi subvert and then reconfigure sexual difference, queer subjectivity, and gendered norms. When viewed together, these works suggest that the sexed body was never far from the center of postwar image experimentation; as individual pieces, they open up complex worlds of transposed desire, indissoluble fetish, and deadly seduction. Mako Idemitsu's lighthearted invocation of traditional gender roles, Shin'ichi Tamano's perversely magical realism, and Yukie Saito's terrifying and oppressive exploration of male-female power dynamics collectively suggest unexpected yet open pathways for desire and subjectivity. — Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
Apparatus M (Takashi Ito, 1996, 6 mins, Silent, Color, 16mm). Feedback (Nobuhiro Kawanaka, 1973, 8 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm). Inner-Man (Mako Idemitsu, 1972, 4 mins, Color, 16mm on video). Dead Youth (Donald Richie, 1967, 13 mins, B&W, 16mm on video). Awanono (Miho Uehara, 2003, 3 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Ai (Love) (Takahiko Iimura, 1962, 10 mins, B&W, 8mm on 16mm). Baby Variations (Mako Idemitsu, 1974, 9 mins, Color, 16mm on video). I Want You to Kiss Me (Koichi Imaizumi, 2004, 5 mins, Color, Video). Utsu-musume Sayuri (Takashi Kimura, 2003, 4 mins, Color, Video). Investigation (Takashi Nakajima, 1984, 3 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Kosoku Bozu (Shin'ichi Tamano, 2002, 11 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Benighted But Not Begun (Yukie Saito, 1994, 22 mins, B&W, 16mm). An Introduction to Cinema for Boys and Young Men (Shuji Terayama, 1974, 3 mins, Color, 16mm triple projection).
* (Total running time: 101 mins)
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Toshio Matsumoto (Japan, 1969)
Funeral Parade of Roses
In 1955, Silver Wheels, Toshio Matsumoto's now lost collaboration with avant-garde composer Toru Takemitsu, helped inaugurate postwar Japanese experimental film. Since then, Matsumoto has embodied the mobility of Japanese experimental video and film with a career that spans work in criticism, theater, documentary, and independent filmmaking. In this program, we pay special homage to Matsumoto's oeuvre with a screening of his drag-queen melodrama Funeral Parade of Roses, a unique film that borrows the not-yet-politicized phenomenon of male homosexuality in 1969 Japan to launch a potent critique of Japanese society at the apex of high-growth economics. A classic in Japan's New Wave tradition, Funeral Parade dazzles in its humorous amalgamation of documentary, narrative, and visual experimentation. — Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
With shorts by Matsumoto:
Expansion (Japan, 1972). Matsumoto's celebrated exploration of new media. (14 mins, Color, 16mm)
For My Crushed Right Eye (Japan, 1968). This extraordinary triple-screen projection-the first multi-projection piece made in Japan-brings the evening to a moving close. (13 mins, Color, 16mm triple projection)
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Blooming Ink Tale
The final JPEX program, devoted to contemporary work, explores a complex interaction between the historical trajectory of Japanese avant-garde traditions and the current global economy of multimedia exchange. In the use of found footage and subversions of narrativity, the revelation of hybrid sexualities and formal explorations of perception and space, these media works question the dynamics of our visual-temporal experience and reveal hybrid and shifting national and cultural identities. — Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
Peach Baby Oil (Junko Wada, 1995, 16 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, Super-8 on video). Textism (Isamu Hirabayashi, 2003, 11 mins, Color, Video). Mathematica (Sawa Takashi, 2000, 8 mins, Color, 8mm on video). Blooming Ink Tale (Kentaro Onitsuka, 2003, Color, 10 mins, 16mm on video). Plate #23 (songs) (Ryusuke Ito, 2003, 4 mins, Color, 16mm). Apollo (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2003, 6 mins, B&W, 16mm). A flick film in which there appear Liz and Franky, is composed under the score of ARNULF RAINER by P. Kubelka on NTSC (Ichiro Sueoka, 2000, 5 mins, Color, Video). Decades Passed (Tatsu Aoki, 2003, 26 mins, Color, 16mm).
Curated/Notes by Jonathan M. Hall and Michelle Puetz
Jonathan M. Hall is assistant professor of comparative literature at UC Irvine.
Michelle Puetz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.
JPEX: Japanese Experimental Film and Video, 1955–Now has been made possible with the support of the Image Forum Archive, Tokyo, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Irvine. Prints from Image Forum except as otherwise noted.
