Shift

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.

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)

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.

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

'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.

Pictures from a Buddhist temple cut up and manipulated.

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.

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.

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'.

While extracting and polishing their blocks of stone, stonecutters used to say “the stone is coming to life". This paradox provided Matsumoto with the best metaphor for what making a film is all about. In his opinion, filmmakers work images in the same way that stonecutters work stones.

Documentary about the relationships between mothers and their children.

In Connection, a static shot of the sky with moving clouds is subdivided into regular geometrical regions, which are then individually (and rhythmically) manipulated.

A mesmerizing trip through the psychedelic vastness of space.

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

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."