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16mm, b&w, silent, 5'00

The viewer spends a pleasant 30 minutes enfolded in the agreeably lazy atmosphere generated by repeating images and minimalist music that characterize Nakamura’s films. The rhythm of repetitions, subtle deviations, and memories evoked by momentary images transform the scenery of an actual street into a world of daydreams. Nakamura’s distinctive trance film has earned high international acclaim.

16mm b&w film

An 8mm animation produced by Hiroshi Harada in his high school years.

Shot surreptitiously by a crew operating without visas (then necessary for travel to Okinawa), this provocative film traces the legacy of Japanese colonialism, documenting Taiwanese laborers in Okinawa and then moving southward to Tayal village in Taiwan, where the anti-Japanese uprising known as the Musha Incident took place.

16mm film, optical color. Uses the camera with deliberate technique to record Japan's leading punk band In a style that imbeds the music in a filmic texture.

Short film by Japanese filmmaker Jun’ichi Okuyama.

Experimental short by Masaki Matsushita.

An animated short film by Taku Furukawa.

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and Hakudo Kobayashi presented the video performance Eat at Video Hiroba's first exhibition, Video Communication DO IT YOURSELF KIT. Two performers sit at a table. One records the other eating; then they switch roles. The live video feed of the performance was displayed on a monitor in the exhibition space.

Short film by Japanese filmmaker Jun’ichi Okuyama.

The fate of heavy smokers. The era is the Taisho era. A young man, while warming myself by the fire heavy smoking. Then, his chest instantly turned black. The fear of lung cancer creeping into the comical depiction. The author, a former smoker, dreamed the fate of smokers.

Bunkyo University Film Study Club 1979 8mm Film Production.

This short animated film was shown at the Seiko Pavilion during the 1970 Osaka Expo. It tells the story of a day when time is thrown into chaos by an alien prank, and speaks to the importance of time. The rapid change of the seasons is full of the charm of metamorphosis (the process of changing shape), which Osamu Tezuka loved.

I cut out a rectangular portion of a photograph to create a peephole, equivalent to a camera viewfinder. The cut-out photograph is a sequence of photographs that show a hand pointing at the peephole. I repeatedly overlaid the sequence of peephole photographs onto a photograph of a corner of a room, creating an image in which the window looking into a part moves within the whole.

I made this in 1977 because I wanted to show a "Prologue" at the beginning and an "Epilogue" at the end of my solo exhibition. I used stock photographs from "Preparation."

8mm films are shot at 18 or 24 frames per second and projected at the same speed. Some 8mm projectors are capable of slow-motion projection. The slower the projection speed, the more intermittent the image becomes, making it clear that you are watching a series of slides in sequence. So I decided to try shooting something closer to normal movement using slow motion projection. I pressed the camera release button as hard as I could until my fingers cramped. The idea of ​​cinematic movement is to see pictures one after the other, so the shooting speed is up to your fingers, and the projection speed is also roughly the same.

“This film is assembled from a series of cuts conveying different moods. It is mostly composed of the simple action of seeing images alternately or in succession, such as of scissors cutting against each other, or of the blink of eyes peering through a magnifying glass. I thought of them as being like red, amber and green traffic lights.” (Isao Kota)

Live performance with two projectors. Human beings become shutters, if you flutter two fan in front of the lens. According to the movement, the eyes wink on the screen.

These are Yamashita Park and Yokohama sightseeing boats in 1976. In the live action section, I expressed the relationship between the landscape and the viewfinder with a moving matte, and in the photographic section, I explored the relationship between the image and the frame by presenting various patterns.

A movie film shot continuously is a series of action shots, one frame at a time. This is because there is a continuation of movement between the images in one frame and the next. On the other hand, since each frame is a single photograph, it is possible to trim and enlarge or reduce the image frame by frame. For example, if the normal zoom process is A→B→C→D, by enlarging and reducing each frame, it can become C→A→D→B. This is not unnatural since a movie is a series of photographs. The movement of the subject is continuous within the image that is enlarged and reduced frame by frame.

I took this photo in Uraga. I was carrying a tripod with an 8mm camera on it, so it was a selfie from behind. The tripod is always in the frame, so it has a strong presence. The film was then projected and each frame was re-shot at different zoom ratios, allowing viewers to alternate between looking at the entire screen and the center, frame by frame. In the second half, I re-photographed the screen so that the tilted landscape on the screen was returned to a horizontal position, expressing the idea that the landscape is stationary and it is the viewfinder that moves.

We filmed a cheetah roaming around at Tama Zoo. We projected that footage and followed the cheetah's movements on the screen with a camera. The cheetah was in a cage called a screen, so when we followed it, the darkness outside the screen came into the frame.

What does a noose mean?

Experimental short by Yoichi Nagata.

The film was made at a turning point in the struggle in Sanrizuka, documenting the actions against the first flights in Narita. The film chronicles the Sanrizuka struggle and the spring events that led to the occupation of the airport’s control tower by one of the factions in the opposition struggle.

This film, which begins with the words "Be Peep 5" scratched into the film, is projected at 9 frames per second, twice the speed of the normal 8mm projection, 18 frames per second. By doing so, the object filmed frame by frame is exposed to the viewer's eyes for a longer period of time, creating an effect that is different from that of normal slow motion, where the object filmed at high speed is projected at a normal number of frames. This creates a strange sense of rhythm that strongly stimulates the viewer's sensibilities. 6 shows the overlapping of colors, and 7 shows the development of an image centered on silhouettes as the mind moves.

Lips, gun, murderous intent, darkness, loneliness, and a woman...

The White Hare of Inaba is a film directed by Katō Yoshihiro, a central member of Zero Jigen, with cinematography by the filmmaker Ōe Masanori. Drawing on the Japanese myth of the white hare of Inaba, it presents a white hare (i.e. woman) leaping across waters full of ferocious sharks (i.e. male-dominated society), presenting a vision for a new era while capturing on film the joy of human beings’ inherent Eros and a new mode of “family” that breaks free of feudalistic social constraints.

A Film by Keiji Uematsu.

A Film by Keiji Uematsu.

A Film by Keiji Uematsu.

A Film by Keiji Uematsu.

A short film by Katsuhiro Yamaguchi.

Hiroshi Yamazaki, 16mm, 1'00

16mm, b&w, 7'00

The title is a phonetical arrangement in kanji Chinese characters of camp, a concept synonymous with Michio Okabe. Okabe radically explores his distinct, Japanese camp aesthetic in the enclosed space of the film world. As written in the kanji, “precious night, wealth of dreams” (貴い夜、夢の富), inhabitants of the night world such as butoh dancer, gay character, night watch, violinist, masseuse, yakitori shop, vampire, dog, and cat, appear one after another and unfold a disastrous but beautiful soirée.

Dancing man. A woman clapping her hands to the rhythm. Narrow down your theme communication between men and women rhythmically expressed. People's movements stripped down to the bare minimum, the start and end points of the movement. A composed work by just two photos. Inspired by cinematic expression before the birth of cinema, it was made using a simple method.

A short animated film by Furukawa Taku.

Experimental short by Iwata Yūji

An ethnographic documentary filmed among the Trobriand Islanders of the Western Pacific, directed by Yasuko Ichioka for Japanese television. The film documents the Kula exchange system, a ceremonial network of inter-island gift exchange that structures social relations, travel, and status among participating communities. Produced within the context of Japan’s Our Wonderful World ethnographic television series, the film presents sustained observational footage of ritual activity and daily life associated with the Kula cycle. (Note: Although produced for television within the Our Wonderful World series, the film is consistently cited in ethnographic filmographies, festival programs, and scholarly sources as a self-contained work with a distinct title, director credit, and runtime, supporting its treatment as a standalone film.)

Short film by Japanese filmmaker Jun’ichi Okuyama.

Sky and earth. The image begins to move slowly. The sound of water moving in and out of the distance. The image begins to fluctuate, while rotating, it will come off the frame. Everything swings. A moment when you just drop by. Installation and performance work.

Created a paper film. This is a work that will be projected using a regular projector. The perforations are well opened. After all, it's paper. If it gets torn or ripped, this film will burn. And the woman's face in the monochrome image, it turns skin color. This is also a one-off {disposable film}.

TV Favorites Gather!! was a celebration of Japanese TV shows including tokusatsu.

Bunkyo University Film Research Club 1979 8mm Film Production.

Bunkyo University Film Study Club 1979 8mm Film Production.

8mm film made in 1979 by the Bunkyo University Film Research Club.

Experimental short by Harumi Fujii.

Silver Jaguar is a 1979 unaired tokusatsu TV pilot produced by P-Productions and a French company.

experimental film by Etsutomu Kashihara

I wanted to make a film in which the world is turned upside down, a film made up of images that assert that these images have no meaning. There is a shot that uses a doll, which was washed up on the riverbank where we visited while filming "Mineralogist". I picked it up thinking that I might be able to use it in the shoot. Masanobu Nakamura seemed to think that this shot was my response to "Commemorative Photography" and asked me about it, but I had no idea what it meant so I was at a loss for words.

Human eye movements are similar to the way pigeons and chickens shake their heads. I wanted to capture that restlessness in a video. I held an 8mm camera in my hand, placed it on my head, and filmed while walking down the street. I projected the film on a screen, cut out the image to capture the movement of the eyes, and re-filmed each frame. I also made a blinking mask to use in the re-filming.

In order to see that a sequence of photographs is a film, I made various experiments within a single uninterrupted film. This work was the starting point for my work from "Dutchman's Photographs (8mm version)" which I made after interrupting this work, to "Emotion Boat" in 1976.

The first half of the film is about the silent sound of the cicadas penetrating the rocks. The overall view is of a horizontal rotation as you ascend from your feet to the sun, but this is the first half of the film. In the latter half of the sequence, a man appears in front of the screen with a guitar and performs an improvised performance in the style of the Tsugaru shamisen. The atmosphere of the film changes drastically as the sounds of nature are replaced with music, making this a strange film, for better or worse.

I once had a vivid feeling, basking in the sunlight in a field listening to the murmuring of melting snow, that I was surrounded by sensations, sounds and sights. I wanted to express that feeling.