Mako Idemitsu

The film shows vivid close-ups of a liver with the background music of “My Baby” by Janice Joplin.

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.

At Any Place 1, 1975, film, 16 min, color. Casted over the sky, images of people are suggested as shapes of clouds

When Yoji announces to his mother that he wants her to meet a new girlfriend, the mother's jealousy destroys the relationship. Yoji's mother fastens onto her son, unable to leave his mother or experience love for any other woman.

This film shows the images of a dancing woman who is wearing Kimono overlapping another image which a naked man is dancing. This is one of the original psychological concepts of C.G. Jung. For women, Animus is an image of a man by projection of her mental energy.

A mindscape in Santa Monica, where Idemitsu lived for 8 years.

The film shows vivid close-ups of a liver with the background music of “My Baby” by Janice Joplin.

At Any Place 1, 1975, film, 16 min, color. Casted over the sky, images of people are suggested as shapes of clouds

When Yoji announces to his mother that he wants her to meet a new girlfriend, the mother's jealousy destroys the relationship. Yoji's mother fastens onto her son, unable to leave his mother or experience love for any other woman.

This film shows the images of a dancing woman who is wearing Kimono overlapping another image which a naked man is dancing. This is one of the original psychological concepts of C.G. Jung. For women, Animus is an image of a man by projection of her mental energy.

A mindscape in Santa Monica, where Idemitsu lived for 8 years.

One of a series of Idemitsu’s works which deal with housewives buried in everyday life. Idemitsu overlapped a 16 mm work that had Yoneyama Mamako pantomiming in her “Tango of a Hosewife” for the Commemoration of the International Women’s year, 1975. Behind Mamako pantomiming as a housewife, there are clouds, sunsets and bonfires.

Today, Japan is envied by the world for her economic prosperity, which however, has resulted in producing this sort of average family. Its contains a wife who has to serve her husband, a preoccupied businessman, and who showers all her attention on her child who is also left behind at home with the mother. The child, especially a son, becomes a replacement for her husband. Mother and son share an intimate life like lovers at home without the husband. It seems that this is such a common occurrence that Japanese society ignores this video work. Those that are envious of the Japanese economic success will become less so if they see this work and realize what this real phenomena in Japanese society is like.

Rachel, a hippie girl, and Bernard, an elderly artist, strip naked and start dancing amidst the lush greenery of Southern California.

In Idemitsu's experiment using a video camera and monitor, the reflexive exercise looking into a mirror is swapped with the monitor, suggesting a reflection on the history of women's relationship with makeup.

What is America to her? Idemitsu, who lived in America for eight years, looks introspectively at herself and her strange connection with America.

Hideo, a young man living away from his parents, is kept under constant surveillance by his doting mother via an omnipresent television monitor. Mama can only communicate with her beloved, absent son through the video screen.

A film made using a work of Cindy Sherman, expresses Idemitsu's free and easy sense of humor.

Kiyoko's Situation articulates the deeply embedded cultural roles of Japanese women through the parallel stories of two female artists, Kiyoko and Tani. In Idemitsu's narrative-within-a-narrative, "Kiyoko's situation" is played out on a television monitor within Tani's drama. Tani is paralyzed in her attempts to paint by her feeling that, as a single woman, she has failed in society's eyes. Kiyoko, a young mother viciously criticized by her husband and family for her fierce determination to paint, eventually compromises her art for "maternal duty." As Kiyoko complies with the family, Tani, isolated and despairing, is driven to suicide. Idemitsu's chillingly omniscient television monitor, which acts as the psychological "other," metaphorically and literally condemns Tani to death. In the final cruel irony, she hangs herself, using the television monitor as a jumping-off point.

Idemitsu handed four women who frequented the feminist gathering space Hōkiboshi a video camera to record whatever they wished as Idemitsu also recorded their actions. The whole group then watched all five videos on five monitors, which Idemitsu then also recorded.

This film is composed of different images of a girl, clouds, and trees.

This film was made for a 3 minutes film festival held in Japan. A cup noodle is ready in 3 minutes.

This film shows lofty sentiments with music by Aki Takahashi. Idemitsu’s mental images are beautifully and sensuously filmed; a mass of snails intertwined as if copulating in a group; scarlet petals; curtains swing in the wind.

Idemitsu's camera follows a gay man, Eckard.

A woman’s image as a mind-scape, after she had plastic surgery.

Housewives who find faults in other women that they refuse to admit in themselves, gossiping about them as if it were none of their business. This work visualizes the concept of the 'shadow' as it manifests within everyday occurrences.

Whispering Light, 1985, film, 10:50 min, color In this emblematic personal film, light and shadow of plants is successfully constructed over the subjective gaze of the narrator who is working through her mother’s death.

This film shows colorful flowers, frame by frame, with some music. The trembling flower resembles a music symphony.

In Kae, Act Like A Girl, Idemitsu continues her experimental narrative exploration of women's roles in contemporary Japan with a tale of women's liberationist awakening. Here she presents a young female artist's conflict with the traditional, patriarchal expectations of women in Japanese culture, in which men are privileged and women are groomed to be wives and mothers. Within Idemitsu's narrative, video screens and images represent the protagonist's inner struggle — memories, conscience, familial pressure — as she subordinates and then ultimately achieves her personal and artistic desires.

In Kae, Act Like A Girl, Idemitsu continues her experimental narrative exploration of women's roles in contemporary Japan with a tale of women's liberationist awakening. Here she presents a young female artist's conflict with the traditional, patriarchal expectations of women in Japanese culture, in which men are privileged and women are groomed to be wives and mothers. Within Idemitsu's narrative, video screens and images represent the protagonist's inner struggle — memories, conscience, familial pressure — as she subordinates and then ultimately achieves her personal and artistic desires.

The relationship between the mother and daughter is psychologically very tight. The isolated husband is irritated and becomes violent whenever he drinks but the two women cannot understand the reason of his violence. The mother lets the daughter marry for appearance's sake although in reality she hangs onto the daughter forever.

Under the wild cloudy skies of New Mexico, Idemitsu reflected on the history of the native Americans.

This work portrays 'Animus,' a Jungian concept representing the masculine side of the female psyche. It embodies the 'Animus image' felt upon viewing 'Messenger from Hell,' a performance by the late Sayako Kishimoto.

This abstract film shows images of tree shadows or natural light of summer sky. Its use of special B/W film creates sharp contrasts depicting Karuizawa like another world.

In this work, the subconscious problems of a daughter who rejects going school is illustrated based on the concept of the Great Mother, a psychological concept by C.G. Jung. The subconscious of the daughter is shown on the screen of the monitor in the scenes. When the daughter becomes violent, how does a personified great mother function?

This work portrays 'Animus,' a Jungian concept representing the masculine aspect within women. The Animus embodies both positive and negative dimensions; however, its destructive sides - namely prejudice and rigid attitudes - are demonstrated here through female dialogue and behavior.

At Yukigaya 1, 1974, film, 3 min, color. A comical mindscape, the film stars Sam Francis who was Idemitsu’s ex-husband.

Idemitsu reflects on her family and the war waged by Japan at the beginning of last century in Asia

Commissioned by the American Center Japan, Idemitsu made a video introducing her husband Sam Francis. She interviewed 5 people about their views of Sam Francis. Those who interviewed were Taeko Tomioka, Toru Takemitsu, Shuzo Takiguchi, Jiro Takamatsu, and Sazo Idemitsu.

Depicts one weekend of a gay couple. The title "Touryanse" refers to a Japanese nursery rhyme.

One man's life is expressed in a form of a mime with a factories' chimneys are placed as its backdrop.

The second part of a trilogy, Great Mother (YUMIKO) is a domestic melodrama that examines the cultural and familial role of Japanese women by tracing the psychology of a turbulent mother-daughter relationship. Yumiko, a rebellious young woman from an affluent family, encounters resistance from her mother, a successful career woman, when she becomes pregnant and marries. The mother is an icy, assured presence, seen only on a television screen as a superego who monitors Yumiko's behavior. The television becomes a powerful metaphorical device, underlining the disunity of the familial structure and acting as a psychological presence. As Yumiko's marriage deteriorates, her pain is juxtaposed with the banal rituals of her mother's life (instructing her subordinates at work, scrubbing the floor at home), an irony ultimately heightened by the viewer's awareness of the reflexivity of this drama-within-a-drama.

In this personal film made during when Idemitsu went back and forth between Japan and USA, the subjective gaze is depicted in the abstract images with high contrast.

A woman performs domestic chores, watched by a television displaying the image of her own eye. The home is recast as a space of surveillance, control and repetitive labor.

As a shadow appears when a human body is lit up, there is a certain dark part like a shadow in the mind of a man. This is an aspect of a man’s personality which he usually is hesitant to admit. C.G.Jung, Swiss psychologist, called this dark aspect a shadow because it appears in personified forms when one dreams. In my work Shadows, there is another monitor in the images of the main monitor. The inside monitor shows the mind of the outside characters, that is, the inside monitor’s characters are shadows, psychological projections of the outside characters. Since the issue of shadows is so complicated and hard to understand, I selected examples that are specific and understandable, as well as familiar to women in their daily life. These are also the feeling I have toward my routine life.

In Idemitsu's seminal women's liberationist video, the image of a tampon swirling in a toilet bowl slowly appears, as the artist speaks about the troubling roles, responsibilities and expectations of women in a clinical tone. Minimal in composition, What a Woman Made is a candid critique of the treatment of women in Japanese society.