Double Portrait

A document of Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh dance with Kazuo Ohno as the guest dancer shot in Hijikata's early period when he was emerging as the originator of Butoh. All of the male dancers are dressed up with evening suits and move gracefully, yet an intruder breaks up the whole scene abruptly. The film is worth seeing, even if just to see a memorable gay duet of Hijikata and Ohno. Overexposed, washed out images are sandwiched among normal ones.

The early sixteenth-century Japanese garden in the Zen temple of Ryoan-ji, in Kyoto, is considered a masterpiece of the karesansui or "dry landscape" style... In this film, the viewer is invited to experience the garden as an embodiment of ma, a Japanese concept that conveys both time and space... The aesthetic of the film is the message, it has the quality of an experimental film, a conceptual film-an artwork in itself. Good balance of music/visuals/titles. If not as compelling for some viewers as for others, still rated as very effective. Makes one want to visit the actual garden and experience its spiritual energy. – Art on Screen

“ONAN is a work about desire (masturbation) which has no object but itself. The appearance of the large egg objectifies the man's desires. After colliding with the other (a girl), the hero falls down while still holding the egg, thus caricaturing the desire of the hero.” —Takahiko Iimura (takaiimura.com)

"10 minutes of the act of creation itself run through close up and magnifying lenses. " -T.I.

Cameras observing each other.

Four four-minute image sections and four four-minute sound sections are linked in all combinations of the sound sections with each of the image sections. This established affinities between each of the image sections to the others, and the sound sections to each other. The image sections are: surveyors measuring the land near my house as seen through an old window, a family of Siamang Gibbon apes in the Washington zoo, an industrial site, and a page turned from a book on Cézanne’s composition showing a diagram of his painting Mardi Gras, filmed against bright leaves. The sound sections are: a dramatic scene from Debussy’s opera “Pelléas et Mélisande”, a passage from William Wordworth’s autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” sounds from rowing on a lake at night, and the sounds of the apes vocalizing.

On John's 31st birthday, Yoko held an art exhibit, "This Is Not Here", at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, N.Y.. The show was taped and aired on U.S. TV on May 11, 1972 as "John and Yoko in Syracuse, New York.

Film installation by Japanese experimental filmmaker Takahiko Iimura.

Anma (The Masseurs) is a representative and historical work by the creator of Butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata in his early period in the 1960s. The film is realized not only as a dance document but also as a Cine-Dance, a term made by Iimura, that is meant to be a choreography of film. The filmmaker "performed" with a camera on the stage in front of the audience. With the main performers: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the film has the highlights such as Butohs of a soldier by Hijikata & a mad woman by Ohno. There is a story of the mad woman, first outcast and ignored, at the end joins to the community through her dance. Inserted descriptions of Anma (The Masseurs) are made for the film by the filmmaker, but were not in the original Butoh. The film, the only document taken of the performance, must be seen for the understanding of Hijikata Butoh and the foundation of Butoh.

Iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol. In each portrait, Iimura attempts to copy the styles and traits of each artist (Vanderbeek's constantly moving camera; Mekas' experiments with film speed; Warhol's use of flashes of white against a black background), while briefly commenting on the images being shown. The film serves effectively as an introduction to the film styles of these artists.

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expression.

From the collector of Marquis de Sade in the early 1960s, still a 'dark age ' of erotic picture, even his novels were forbidden to publish in Tokyo, I burrowed the copies of the engraving taken from the 18th century edition of "The story of Juliette" and of "The story of Justine." and rearranged along a story made from of the pictures not from the novels. An exercise out of the curiosity. It was the same year I made Ai (Love) in 1962 which consists of mostly extreme close-ups of love making. I have kept DeSade for many years in my closet without looking at it myself and have forgotten about it. By a chance I re-found the film 50 years later that there is something worth to see. (T.I, 2012)

"It's a mixture of [dead] animals, pieces of [broken] furniture, industrial waste, kids playing. I didn't have in mind any of the kind of historical perspective, nor was I trying to make an ecological statement. I was showing the new landscape of our civilization. My point of view was animistic. I tried to revive those dead animals metaphorically and to give the junk new life."

'What I am concerned with in this film is not only the flicker effect, but also the coming and going of an eye-like shape on screen which was created by a fade-in-out device while shooting the light/the bulb of the projector. The viewer literally looks into the light which acts like an eye.'(T.I.)

The 1981 performance Circle & Square by Takahiko Iimura, New York-based Japanese film and video pioneer, evolved from the artist's interest in exposing the apparatus of projection and the materiality of image and light, which began in the mid-60s. The work commences with the projection of a long loop of black 16mm film leader suspended from the ceiling. The artist punches a hole on the film's surface and as it loops through the projector's gate, a single white circle of light pierces the darkness. With each subsequent punch the film builds before the viewer’s eyes into a cascade of white circles before reaching its abrupt and revelatory conclusion.