Takahiko Iimura

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Experimental film involving letters.

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expression.

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

Iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol. In each portrait, Iimura attempts to copy the styles and traits of each artist (Vanderbeek's constantly moving camera; Mekas' experiments with film speed; Warhol's use of flashes of white against a black background), while briefly commenting on the images being shown. The film serves effectively as an introduction to the film styles of these artists.

Experimental short by Keiji Aiuchi.

Four four-minute image sections and four four-minute sound sections are linked in all combinations of the sound sections with each of the image sections. This established affinities between each of the image sections to the others, and the sound sections to each other. The image sections are: surveyors measuring the land near my house as seen through an old window, a family of Siamang Gibbon apes in the Washington zoo, an industrial site, and a page turned from a book on Cézanne’s composition showing a diagram of his painting Mardi Gras, filmed against bright leaves. The sound sections are: a dramatic scene from Debussy’s opera “Pelléas et Mélisande”, a passage from William Wordworth’s autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” sounds from rowing on a lake at night, and the sounds of the apes vocalizing.

This is a film about a medium approaching extinction, an 8mm documentary film about a vanishing 8mm cinema. Blending two genres, the science film and the personal film, and benefiting from the participation of multiple generations of cineastes, it is a reflection upon the original cinematic experience.

8mm short by Kenji Onishi and Tohru Mabuchi.

"10 minutes of the act of creation itself run through close up and magnifying lenses. " -T.I.

From the collector of Marquis de Sade in the early 1960s, still a 'dark age ' of erotic picture, even his novels were forbidden to publish in Tokyo, I burrowed the copies of the engraving taken from the 18th century edition of "The story of Juliette" and of "The story of Justine." and rearranged along a story made from of the pictures not from the novels. An exercise out of the curiosity. It was the same year I made Ai (Love) in 1962 which consists of mostly extreme close-ups of love making. I have kept DeSade for many years in my closet without looking at it myself and have forgotten about it. By a chance I re-found the film 50 years later that there is something worth to see. (T.I, 2012)

Film installation by Japanese experimental filmmaker Takahiko Iimura.

A super-real comedy with Sho Kazakura. The film is divided in to a number of very short scenes or chapters, each with a title "A,B,C" at random. we see him lame in a crowd, see him running up stairs, see him absolutely naked, watch him urinate, etc. An anthology of discontinuous happenings and events.

On John's 31st birthday, Yoko held an art exhibit, "This Is Not Here", at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, N.Y.. The show was taped and aired on U.S. TV on May 11, 1972 as "John and Yoko in Syracuse, New York.

On John's 31st birthday, Yoko held an art exhibit, "This Is Not Here", at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, N.Y.. The show was taped and aired on U.S. TV on May 11, 1972 as "John and Yoko in Syracuse, New York.

"The original film was rescued from a Tokyo trash bin. It is an American sexual education film in which plant and animal sex are explained. I, together with an artist friend, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, punched big holes in almost all of the frames. It was a protest against Japanese censorship of explicit images of sex, particularly pubic hair which the censors would cover with black marks. I inserted a few subliminal frames of pornographic imagery from magazines several times throughout the film. At the end, I even punched holes in these subliminal pictures, thereby 'censoring' the censored image." — Takahiko Iimura

Experimental film involving letters.

Experimental film involving letters.

"The Making..." showed not only the process of film-making, but also the creation of "MA" as a work.

Originally filmed in 8mm a little stone-made Buddha in a temple of Katmandu, the film strip in ten seconds was projected as a loop, and then the screen w as refilmed many times in 16mm at different speeds (frames per second). The original 8mm footage has been greatly expanded through refilming in 16mm. The rhythmic manipulation of "flying Buddha" in the air is realized.

Anma (The Masseurs) is a representative and historical work by the creator of Butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata in his early period in the 1960s. The film is realized not only as a dance document but also as a Cine-Dance, a term made by Iimura, that is meant to be a choreography of film. The filmmaker "performed" with a camera on the stage in front of the audience. With the main performers: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the film has the highlights such as Butohs of a soldier by Hijikata & a mad woman by Ohno. There is a story of the mad woman, first outcast and ignored, at the end joins to the community through her dance. Inserted descriptions of Anma (The Masseurs) are made for the film by the filmmaker, but were not in the original Butoh. The film, the only document taken of the performance, must be seen for the understanding of Hijikata Butoh and the foundation of Butoh.

Anma (The Masseurs) is a representative and historical work by the creator of Butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata in his early period in the 1960s. The film is realized not only as a dance document but also as a Cine-Dance, a term made by Iimura, that is meant to be a choreography of film. The filmmaker "performed" with a camera on the stage in front of the audience. With the main performers: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the film has the highlights such as Butohs of a soldier by Hijikata & a mad woman by Ohno. There is a story of the mad woman, first outcast and ignored, at the end joins to the community through her dance. Inserted descriptions of Anma (The Masseurs) are made for the film by the filmmaker, but were not in the original Butoh. The film, the only document taken of the performance, must be seen for the understanding of Hijikata Butoh and the foundation of Butoh.

'What I am concerned with in this film is not only the flicker effect, but also the coming and going of an eye-like shape on screen which was created by a fade-in-out device while shooting the light/the bulb of the projector. The viewer literally looks into the light which acts like an eye.'(T.I.)

Using the system of academy leader: 10 to 1, the film replaces the number to white space with bip sound (clear leader) gradually until it reaches to complete white.

In the general classification, this was a complete abstract film and a kind of experimental movie as well, only black film, which blocks light, and clear film, which is totally transparent, were used as the basic materials.

Iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol. In each portrait, Iimura attempts to copy the styles and traits of each artist (Vanderbeek's constantly moving camera; Mekas' experiments with film speed; Warhol's use of flashes of white against a black background), while briefly commenting on the images being shown. The film serves effectively as an introduction to the film styles of these artists.

A touching portrait of his partner Akiko and the days following their wedding, Iimura's conceptual rigour loosens in favour of intimacy in Honey Moon. (Julian Ross)

White Calligraphy is an abstract short made by scratching characters from 'Kojiki', an early Japanese text, into the frames of 16mm black leader.

"It's a mixture of [dead] animals, pieces of [broken] furniture, industrial waste, kids playing. I didn't have in mind any of the kind of historical perspective, nor was I trying to make an ecological statement. I was showing the new landscape of our civilization. My point of view was animistic. I tried to revive those dead animals metaphorically and to give the junk new life."

"Double Portrait" and "I Love You" are a paired piece with Akiko Iimura. Both Iimuras play individually as well as a unit. In "Double Portrait" they are never together, but one by one in three points of view, front, side, and back, assigned to the words "I", "You" and "He/She" respectively. The pronouns rotate with every repetition, for instance, in front view with "You", then "He/She" and back to "I". Often the words are destroyed acoustically making them unintelligible. "I Love You" is not a style of confession, but the words, and a linguistic practice using a sentence and shifting the pronouns.

Yomiuri Independent was an annual show between 1949-1963 that exhibited all art that was submitted. Artists in the early 60s began to take advantage of the challenge by provoking the organisers with their submissions that cast a question on the framework of art within the gallery space. The objet d'art and performances we see in Dada 62 are fragments of what was shown in its 1962 version with pieces by Genpei Akasegawa, Jiro Takamatsu and Shinmei Kojima making an appearance. (Julian Ross)

One of the earliest minimalist video with flicker effects was produced in Tokyo in early 1970s. A flickering video with eyes, which super-impose the positive over the negative, open and close rapidly. At the same time the "blind" effects of video fast-forwarding accelerates/decelerates the picture synchronized with the sound.

An attempt at time travel in a very conceptual sense.