Toshio Matsumoto

Gengobe Satsuma, an exiled samurai cast out as an Asano clan retainer, is given a second chance to join his brothers in arms to become the 48th Ronin against the Shogunate. His faithful servant gathers the 100 ryo required for his acceptance. Gengobe is also in love with a greedy geisha named Koman. About to be sold to another man, Gengobe learns that in order to keep her, her debt is exactly 100 ryo.

Repetitive abstract experimental film. A bearded man flickers past a hundred times.

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

A young man murders his new bride and goes insane. He wakes in an asylum with no memory, left in the hands of two mysterious doctors who relate his condition with his biological identity.

'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.

A five-part documentary chronicling Toshio Matsumoto, the legendary filmmaker known as a pioneer of experimental cinema in Japan and also active as a film theorist, who exerted a profound influence on innovative film expression from the 1950s onward. Directed by filmmaker and critic Takefumi Tsutsui—himself both a filmmaker and critic like Matsumoto—the project was filmed over the course of ten years. Interweaving excerpts from Matsumoto’s works with an extensive series of interviews with collaborators and critics, the documentary retraces, through the figure of Matsumoto, the tumultuous decades from the 1950s to the 2000s across five parts, totaling 700 minutes.

A 20-year-old drifter and a precocious 16-year-old girl slowly form a bond in a small town haunted by its wartime past.

Towards the end of WWII, a black American pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their 'catch'.

Engram is a three-part piece revolving around a few good old ideas such as photos inside of photos, movies inside of movies, photos inside of movies, movies inside of photos, and (even) a film director inside a TV set.

Writes Matsumoto, "I used the Erekutoro Karapurosesu (Electro Color Processor), which is mainly used in the field of medicine and engineering, to create moving image textures Metastasis, I was interested in layering images of a simple object and its electronically processed abstraction. The electronic abstract image is manipulated in a certain rhythm, depicting an organic process."

There's more to picture than meets the eye in this journey into oriental metaphysical imagery. Starting (in a very Christian manner) with the Word, the film draws an explosion of visible forms, as if a sign of the shattering of shapes in the mundane world. But time is cyclical, of course, and what was once a multitude of sensible realities must eventually return to the Word and, finally, to sheer Color. (Sound of Eye)

Silver Wheel (Bicycle in Dream) is a PR film that was produced to promote the export of bicycles. However, Matsumoto Toshio, who was an employee of the Shin-riken Pictures, which had been contracted to produce the film, asked for the cooperation of Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, Kitadai Shozo and Takemitsu Toru, at the time members of Jikken Kobo, and also invited the participation of Tsuburaya Eiji, the leading expert in the field of special effects. Therefore, this work depicts a young boy’s dreams concerning a bicycle, while making the most of the realistic and materialistic character of bicycle parts and of surreal and fantasy-like scenes. Due to the course of its production and the fresh images and music used, this was seen as being the first example of experimental cinema in postwar Japan.

A mesmerizing trip through the psychedelic vastness of space.

Documentary about the relationships between mothers and their children.

"A flicker film made using only intense shock-zooms, Vibration is one of a series of films Matsumoto made in the 1980s that explored proprioception through a mixture of minimalist effects and modernist architecture." - filmlinc.org

Matsumoto's last video was produced by Sano Gallery. Matsumoto set the common theme as “Seeing” in 2009, six co-writers participated to directing the omnibus film, "Seeing". Initially, there were no plans to expand it into trilogy, and Matsumoto was also limitedly involved in the work. Later, Matsumoto envisioneds works that pursued the omnibus format, and sets up a common theme of "memory.” Afterwards, Matsumoto begun the production of Pilgrimage into the Memory, a reconstruction of works produced by five participating artists. However, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred while producing the work. Matsumoto shocked by the earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, he decided to produce a new work, All Things Change, and titled it's trilogy, Toro no Ono Daisambu. The third part, All Things Change, consists of videos produced by Tanotaiga, Kanako Inaki, Hiroyuki Oki, Okuno Kunito, and Tanako Tanaka.

By cutting up and zoom in on images of facades creates Matsumoto visual effects.

"Set to a soundtrack of pulsing synth bleats, Delay Exposure rhythmically deploys a low-tech, in-camera tricks—including lens-flares, whip-pans, and rapid, strobing exposure shifts—to builds an affective sense of place and architecture." - filmlinc.org

A short documentary about a trailer weighing over 300 tons that carries material for the construction of a dam toward Tokyo.

Experimental film by Toshio Matsumoto created for the 1970 world's fair, Expo '70 in Osaka. The film was made up of multiple projections onto the inside of the Textile Pavilion, a dome with an interior designed by Yokoo Tadanori, and featured a 57-channel music score by Joji Yuasa.

ĀTMAN is a visual tour-de-force based on the idea of the subject at the centre of the circle created by camera positions (480 such positions). Shooting frame-by-frame the filmmaker set up an increasingly rapid circular motion. ĀTMAN is an early Buddhist deity often connected with destruction; the Japanese aspect is stressed by the devil mask of Hangan, from the Noh, and by using both Noh music and the general principle of acceleration often associated with Noh drama.

The Weavers of Nishijin captures the process of traditional textile manufacture in Nishijin.

Expansion remixes the images of Matsumoto’s Esctasis into an more colourful psychedelic short.

It was produced to be exhibited at the “Personal Focus” (April 23-8, 1985), a three-minute, 8mm film screening held in Fukuoka. Digitized the original 8mm film that Matsumoto had been stored. The concept of this works is same as Delay Exposure, but in this film, it begins with a sequence that sets the aperture to excessive exposure. During a one to two-second-long shoot, the camera zooms in, the automatic exposure device also follows the movement of the image, and immediately lights the screen with proper exposure. This short sequence combined with a series of shots in the background, is processed.