Stom Sogo

"A Mixtape for Stom" is an intimate documentary portrait of Japanese experimental filmmaker Stom Sogo (1975–2012), whose frenetic Super-8mm works became emblematic of New York’s underground cinema at the turn of the millennium. A close friend, filmmaker Adrian Goycoolea reflects on Sogo’s life and legacy, framing the film as a reply to the final email he received from him. Drawing from personal archives, interviews, and memory, the film assembles a collage of Sogo’s art and presence: radiant, restless, and unresolved. Contributors include Jonas Mekas, Bruce McClure, Raha Raissnia, Julius Ziz, Ed Halter, Andy Lampert, and members of Sogo’s family, offering perspectives on his talent, struggles, and influence. Scored by Joe Watson of Stereolab, "A Mixtape for Stom" is at once an elegy and an act of remembrance; a meditation on friendship and grief, and a testament to an underground legacy that continues to reverberate.

This is a film portrait of the filmmaker Stom Sogo.

Film by Stom Sogo. Color, sound.

"A vaporous, stop-motion continuum of barely legible images dynamized by a pulsating electronic soundtrack. Although he draws on a bunch of avant-garde classics from Ernie Gehr’s Reverberation to Brakhage’s hand-painted films, Sogo’s voice is assured and all his own." (Amy Taubin)

Re-edit of earlier Super8 home movies with a melancholic soundtrack. One of Stom's last completed works prior to his death.

"Lika is a glimpse into the mesmerizing world of Stom Sogo: a lush kaleidoscope of manipulated video fragments set to an entrancing electronic score. Lika subverts common signifying processes as it weaves rhythmic variations of radiant textures into a captivating immersive experience, equally mysterious and seductive in its masterful play with degrees of abstraction." (Tomonari Nishikawa)

A Super-8 / video double projection by Stom Sogo.

"It's all coming out of Mexico. Surreal gets so real. And invader from England, France or Spain found the taste of cactus cocktail. That makes this movie sweat, ha?" (Stom Sogo)

"Try was originally shot on Super-8mm film and then re-shot on video. The idea was to have the image of young kids kissing forever. Ecstasy here is so wasted." (Stom Sogo)

A video mixtape made up of Sogo's most enduring aesthetic and experiential preoccupations, full of flickering light, electronic vibrations and a total submission to noise, ecstatic and pure. Made as a personal gift before the artist's untimely death.

Super-8 film by Stom Sogo.

Video by Stom Sogo.

"The film begins within Thoreauan-Brakhage territory, with black-and-white shots of leaves in a forest. Slowly, to the sounds of electronic noise, the images transform into blotchy green, yellow and purple compositions that become increasingly abstract through an array of techniques like hand-processing, painting on the film, and multiple re-photography of projected images. Sogo’s candy-colored outer space of handmade coronae takes the viewer on what feels like a bizarre, overpowering journey through the filmmaker’s own singular, labyrinthine mind." (Ed Halter)

Super 8 film by Stom Sogo.

"Her again??? But, well, it's out of my body like no heroin for a year. And their inner lights fade into TV monitor with no signal at all. And my ep spins endless." (Stom Sogo, 2002 NYUFF program notes)

Film by Stom Sogo.

"He stole her girlfriend, and never said thank you for that. super self centered I will pay for that. I did it all. No I won't pay for that. To you NEVER. You did nothing. It's all your fault. I told all my friends how shitty you are. And no, I won't pay for that. You really didn't do nothing. I didn't like your films. Same things over and over again. Label starts walking by itself. You always talk about drug. Stupid shouck value vs. scummy elite attitute. Expressing bullshit psych. You ended up saying the words that you know; society, culture, people and art, ya, fuck sake. Then, closer always gets used, and you act like an asshole, whole equally wasted, isn't that big anyway..." (Stom Sogo, 2002 NYUFF program notes)

COLOUR, DVD

Sogo’s massive 9-reel, nearly 300 minute cycle of Super-8 diary films, which he titled I HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING YET. Dated 1995 but likely spanning a few years, this series contains footage shot while still a student at SVA, images captured on the streets, and at home featuring friends and strangers in the flow of life. Sogo rarely screened his intricately detailed, exquisitely photographed diaries in public, but when he did they left a lasting impression on all those who saw them. Dizzying in their breakneck speed, these works demonstrate Sogo’s incredible eye and preternatural ability to compose in-camera. (Anthology Film Archives)

Short film by Stom Sogo.

"I think I should think more hard when I'm making films to record images, instead of just going out and shoot, but I like people smiling without thinking why they are smiling. I think these faces are so funny." (SS)

Shot just after Sogo dropped out of art school, Problem's You consists of nine rolls of unedited Super-8 film, capturing streets, interiors, and beaches in and around New York City. Each shot was made in a single take, and the rolls' absence of editing emphasizes the importance Sogo placed on chance and spontaneity, a tendency influenced by Jonas Mekas and John Cage.

Video by Stom Sogo.

'This is about the dreamlike images I saw while having epilepsy seizures, as they quite often happened in the past years.' (Stom Sogo)

Film by Stom Sogo. 4 minutes.

A Super-8 film by Stom Sogo.