VAN - A Fragment of a Dream

The Stormy Times is a collection of three short films created as a series of visual poems (Dream Running, Grasshopper’s One-Game Match, andWe Can Hear Joe’s Poem). Katsu Kanai screened this films together, along with extra documentary footage, as a memorial to his friend Jônouchi Motoharu.

A popular poet, Goku, becomes depressed when his editor jokingly suggests that he is a sell-out.

"A film describing some unusual acts by youths attempting to break out of the stifling patterns of culture... daydreaming that yields them nothing. A mob of children enact a burial rite; the place of the 'corpse' is taken by one of the rebellious youths... Beautiful and rare images... one of the best Japanese films." --Iimura

It’s said that people die twice. The first death is a physical one and the second, true death comes when there is no one to remember that person.

The Shinjuku district was the epicentre of Tokyo's art scene and the political fever pitch where protests took place on a regular basis during the 1960s. Jonouchi's compilation footage of the area defies documentary imagery and transforms itself into something altogether more poetically subjective, attempting to capture the chaos of the location through his camerawork and editing. In 1974, Jonouchi projected images of the past onto himself whilst reciting Dada-influenced and virtually inaudible poetry generating a cacophony of images and sounds, drawing from and participating in the maelstrom of political and artistic expression during the era.

Wols is the pseudonym for a German artist active in the early 20th century, Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, and Jonouchi meticulously filmed nearly fifty of his paintings to construct this cine-collage. The result is reminiscent of Alain Resnais’ rendition of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, as both filmed interpretations refuse to provide the viewer with a full picture of the paintings, instead fragmenting and splintering the frame.

The title Gewaltopia Trailer has a dual meaning in the Japanese language; one meaning for the word yokoku (trailer) could mean a compilation of extracts to promote a film, but it can also mean a prediction, a prophecy for the future as a Gewaltopia. The film accumulates footage from his earlier films and arranges them in different contexts, a characteristic style of Jonouchi's who often re-edited his films for each screening and provided different soundtracks.

"A work documenting Ankoku Butoh dancer Tatsuji Hijikata’s Revolt of the Flesh (Nikutai no hanran). The work established the relation between Revolt of the Flesh with uprising through the unique methods of photography and editing that is found in Jonouchi’s Gewaltopia series (1968) which represented the student protest movement." - Collaborative Cataloging Japan

Documents the first demonstration that took place in front of the Nihon University in May of 1968. This is the first work in the "Gewaltpia" series centered around the new student movement that emerged around 1968 in Japan.

Hi-Red Centre were comprised of Genpei Akasegawa, Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Jiro Takamatsu, who enacted ‘happening’-style performance art in unusual spaces during the early 1960s in Japan. The film is an extremely rare document of one of their early events, where they hired out a room in the Imperial Hotel and invited many friends and professionals in the art scene to participate in the occasion. The performance parodies Cold War fears and the construction of private bomb-shelters, as they diligently measure each guest’s weight and proportions in pretence that they are to build human-size shelters for each individual. Key figures of the art scene make an appearance, including Yoko Ono, video-artist Nam June Paik, noise artist Yasunao Tone, filmmaker Masao Adachi and graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo. A rarely seen and exceptional insight into the Japanese art scene of the era, Jonouchi records the event in his characteristically erratic style.

This extraordinary documentary is an unflinching record of the workers’ struggle during Japan’s economic rebirth in the 1980s, centered on Tokyo’s Sanya “yoseba”—a slum community dating from the 19th century where day laborers lived in terrible conditions while they sought work.

This work is an extension of Jonouchi’s documentation of Hi-Red Center’s performance event, Shelter Plan (1964). Using the same unique shooting and editing techniques adopted in the Gewaltpia series, Jonouchi put on record the process of destruction of Frank Lloyd Wright’s renowned architectural piece [the Imperial Hotel], which was the site where Shelter Plan took place.

Short by Motoharu Jonouchi.

Jonouchi, who documented various artists’ performances and events, turned the camera onto himself cutting his hair. Using the experimental methods Jonouchi incorporated in his past works, he painted a private space and time by way of portrayal of his own body.

The late 1960s saw Japan in a fever pitch of political agitation where student protests were a frequent occurrence. A somewhat timely insight into radical protest and mass meetings from almost half a century ago, the film reveals the aftermath of protests and shares extremely rare footage of mass meetings that were held at universities.

Experimental film by Motoharu Jonouchi comprised of both archival footage from the 1960s Japanese student riots and dramatised re-enactions. It was created as a tribute to Michiko Kamba, a student victim of the riots.