JPEX - Contemporary Film, Video, and Animation

A rare opportunity to see the most comprehensive survey of Japanese experimental cinema exhibited in North America in the last twenty years. JPEX documents the radical medium of postwar Japanese experimental film, video, and animation at its fiftieth anniversary. Five screenings, divided by theme, include the work of Ito Takashi, Tanaami Keiichi, Matsumoto Toshio and many others. To provide a public forum for the discussion of the political, aesthetic, and social interventions made by these visual works, the screenings will be followed by a roundtable discussion on Saturday, November 6th.

Contemporary Film, Video and Animation

In the final program of JPEX, devoted to contemporary film, video, and animation, a complex interaction between the historical trajectory of Japanese avant-garde traditions and the current global economy of multi-media exchange is explored. Ranging from the use of found footage to subversions of narrativity, from the revelation of hybrid sexualities to formal explorations of perception and space, these media-works question the dynamics of our visual-temporal experience. Notions of national identity are expanded to reveal hybrid and shifting national and cultural identities.

WADA Junko Peach Baby Oil, 1995, 16m, color, video (Super-8 original), sound

HIRABAYASHI Isamu Textism, 2003, 11m, video, color, sound

TAKASHI Sawa Mathematica, 2000, 8m, 8mm on video, color, sound

ONITSUKA Kentaro Blooming Ink Tale, 2003, 10m, color, 16mm on video, sound

ITO Ryusuke Plate #23 (songs), 2003, 4m, color, 16mm, sound

NISHIKAWA Tomonari Apollo, 2003, 6m, b&w, 16mm, sound

SUEOKA Ichiro A flick film in which there appear Liz and Franky, is composed under the score of ARNULF RAINER by P. Kubelka on NTSC, 2000, video, 5min, sound, color

AOKI Tatsu Decades Passed, 2003, 26m, color, 16mm, sound

and films and videos by Obitani Yuri, Kai Syng Tan, and others