Wordless in Woods

Takashi Makino’s source of inspiration, our place in the world and the universe, never seems to dry up in view of the never-ending flow of immersive films. Generator may well be the earthiest of his films so far, made as a reaction to the Fukushima disaster. A reality check, but in the world that Makino shows, this can never be achieved without looking inwards too.

With the aid of a layered construction of the image, Takashi has managed to capture the different reflections of light on the surface of water. The acoustic-noise-like music and the dancing particles of light move like swarms of microorganisms and in this way slowly cover the entire screen.

Under the name Nivhek, Liz Harris (Grouper) maps richly detailed inner worlds where enigmatic vibrations and voices glide dimly in and out of the void. Double album After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house consists of opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes, and broken FX pedals. In pacing, palette, and poignancy, these sides rank among Harris' most stark, primordial work: fragile, feverish, ominous, and otherworldly. Accompanied by visuals from experimental filmmaker Takashi Makino which were made exclusively for live shows of this album.

A live performance film capturing an intimate concert by composer, pianist and music producer Ryuichi Sakamoto in New York City. The performance marked the first public unveiling of Sakamoto’s new opus, async, hailed as one of the best albums of 2017 by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.

Shadow presences gradually emerge in Japanese filmmaker Makino Takashi’s abstract cinema composed of layers upon layers of natural imagery that awaken the senses.

Borrowing its title from a treatise by Aristotle, the latest film by Makino Takashi is an abstract work that finds its drive in the clash between light and darkness. Entirely composed of superimposed images of Tokyo’s landscape and water sites, the film takes its rhythm from the cycles of repetition that are the pillars of life and civilisation. As light emerges from the chaos, Jim O’Rourke’s ambient drone sets the tone for what is to come.

Takashi Makino's collaboration with Derek Jarman regular Simon Fisher Turner. Taking its starting point as Jarman's blindness after the completion of BLUE.

Short film by Takashi Makino

Filmed entirely on location in Australia, Double Phase follows a discrete visual chronology captured by Takashi Makino. It considers how the complexity of ’natural world’ continues to be reductively framed within contemporary society. Pushing back against the simplistic and monocular sensing of the world, Makino responds with an intensely affective projection of lived experience. Moving far beyond the capacity of lived day to day experience, the film collides image after image into a cascade of almost-cosmic complexity. A reminder that we must always be reaching out and extending ourselves into the world that emerges before us. (Asia TOPA 2020)

Deorbit, the first collaboration between Makino Takashi and Telcosystems, takes viewers on a voyage from the immeasurable depths of space, visible only as pixels, to micro-space, the celluloid grain itself.

A presentation of an expanding formation of "Elements of Nothing". The systematic harsh noise shaped by water and trees gives birth to a storm of novel imagination in the viewer's emotions.

An experimental film by Takashi Makino.

Makino Takashi takes us to a place where different rules apply. He overwhelms us with his universe, which is built up of countless images, figurative and non-figurative, accompanied by an equally sophisticated soundtrack. At times very abstract and distant, at others almost palpable and narrative. We naturally seek recognition in the infinite layering of the images, and in so doing compose our own story, based on what we ourselves know of the world, using our personal references to help us. In this way, a work arises unique to every viewer, which continues to reverberate long after we leave the cinema.

Experimental film for Grouper by Takashi Makino

Experimental film by Takashi Makino

The four elements referred to as "water", "flame", "wind" and "earth" in this film all exist individually while responding to each other, by fighting and loving each other, foster the concept of a world in each individual's "subjectivity".