Axolotl Wooper Looper’s Lair

Collective experimental film by Team 8mm TENGOKU.

A walk, a moment at the beach... And the Japanese filmmaker Utako Koguchi behind the heard piano.

Using stop-motion animation, what Koguchi called 無理矢理アニメ (forced animation), twin sisters Lulu and Lala go through enchanting bodily transformations. The film is a playful and disorienting exploration of sexuality, gender ambiguity, and the chaos of desire, made in the shadow of the AIDS crisis.

Shot on 8mm with a handheld camera, Koguchi performs as a wandering figure who traverses the urban and natural landscapes of Tokyo. A diary-film in which the distance between filmmaker, performer, and subject collapses entirely, this film won Koguchi the Grand Prize at Image Forum Festival in 1989.

The fictional girls' magazine Monthly Ophelia unfolds the literary world of three female writers born in 1896. Ophelia, a legendary girl who died by the river, is resurrected as a boy and lives deep underwater. She reminisces about her childhood and immerses herself in her favorite books across time.

Each person lives a different life, but the hand seemed to be a metaphor for that person's life. In other words, I thought that the life of the person would be determined by what he had. I pick up a fountain pen and stuff the film by hand. This tells my life. I made such a thought into a work.

An intimate portrait of Koguchi's grandmother and a tender, oblique meditation on mortality through performance, this film won the Special Jury Prize at Image Forum Festival in 1992.