Here's the program for tonight's screening/benefit JAPAN! at Microscope
Gallery
with works by: Peter Buntaine, Taka Iimura, Yaseu Maetake, Jonas Mekas,
Jeremy Slater, Stom Sogo, & Leslie Thorton.
We were still working out some details when we posted to the "This Week...."
announcement.
SAT 4/2, 7PM, Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
*SAT 4.2, 7PM, approx. 75 minutes.*
*Cine Dance: The Butoh of Tatsumi Hijikata*
*Anma (The Masseurs)*
*Takahiko Iimura, 16mm to video, b/w*, *silent, 1963-2001, 20 minutes*
*Dancers: Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno, Akira Kasai, and
others.*
*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.
Ueno Rain (Enjuku)
*Jeremy D. Slater, video, col, sound, 2007, 2m 13s*
My last night in Tokyo. The sound of percussion from the rain water on
crushed up Kirin cans and this beautiful green light in Ueno. I had to enjoy
the moment. I felt happy in the rain shooting and recording this. This piece
presented itself to me walking at night in the rain in Tokyo.
Testosterone
*Yasue Maetake, video, col, sound, 2011, 2m 50s*
“When I went to Japan in August 2010, the fire work festival was held in the
small village near by my home town (Yorii-village in Saitama prefecture).
There the festival is famous based on the fire work contest (local
competition among the engineering companies, crafts studio or others).
However, I was amused by the out-of-the-proportional fire work scale and
quality in such a tiny environment, so I felt I was physically in the
central bomb explosion. The boy (my friend’s kid) was excited, saying “wow!
Like a warfare!! Cool! Yey! Like a air force fighting!!”
The video shows a reenactment of my imaginary memory of that festival. It’s
a sign of absolute peace. We exploit our *testosterone* management during
peaceful time by using sensual spectacles experience. It’s not a criticism.
It’s a depiction of us being an intelligent animal.” – - Y M
*Try** (version 3)*
*
Stom Sogo, mini-DV, col, sound, 2009, 9 mins
Footage of lovers kissing, slowed down and looped. “Try was originally shot
on Super-8mm film and then re-shot on video. The idea was to have the image
of young kids kissing forever. Ecstasy here is so wasted.” (SS)
“The films of Stom Sogo are incantatory and self-combustible. An erratic
master of low tech do-it-yourself sortilege, he puts his works through
seemingly perpetual remakes.” (Mark McElhatten)
Let Me Count The Ways: Minus 10, Minus 9, Minus 8, Minus 7, Minus 6
Leslie Thornton, video, col, sound, 2004-2010, 21mins
Let Me Count the Ways is at present composed of five short segments
compressed into a 22-minute exploration of the lead-up to, the confusion
about, and the aftereffects of the Hiroshima bombing. The title
simultaneously references the countdown to the dropping of the bomb and
suggests anticipation. Minus 10 juxtaposes footage of the artist’s father in
Los Alamos and on the way to Tinian Island with an interview with a woman in
Japanese about the bombing. Minus 9 aligns an American nurse’s eyewitness
account of the bombing and its aftermath with aerial landscape shots blocked
by a blinking blue circle which could represent a mutant sun, an eye, planet
Earth, an afterimage, or the inverted “rising sun” of Japanese national
symbolism. Minus 8 and Minus 7 show excerpts from a documentary, The Growth
of Plants (c. 1950), overlaid by running text describing radiation-induced
botanical mutations. Minus 6 explores current American war policies and
ethics contrasted against the histrionics of Adolf Hitler; as the dictator
gesticulates on-screen, women’s voices recite a diatribe by Joseph Goebbels.
In recalling past histories of warfare, Thornton’s current work urges the
reexamination of contemporary politics, and artistic practice, by building
delicately balanced emotional and narrative arguments. (Trinie Dalton)
Tokyo Fish
Peter Eliot Buntaine, s8mm to digital video, color/b&w, silent, 2008, 8m 30s
“When traveling in a foreign land surrounded by an unfamiliar tongue, visual
information becomes more important as well as decontextualized. One begins
to notice colors, gestures and symbols, aestheticized and divorced from
their context in the everyday. Finding myself in this mode of observation –
which is by the same token instinctual/insightful as well as
superficial/limited (limited to surface-level observations) – I crafted a
s8mm film about the surfaces and textures at play in the intersection of
fish and man in Tokyo, Japan.” – - P B
Untitled (Rain, morning, Japan)
Jonas Mekas, miniDV, col, sound, 2007, 3m 37s
Rain, morning, Japan. August 3, 2007.
Untitled
Jonas Mekas, miniDV, col, sound, 2007, 3m 10s
On the plane reading Inazo Nitobe’s ”Bushido, the Soul of Japan”. August 10,
2007.
*
_______________________________________________
FrameWorks mailing list
FrameWorks_at_jonasmekasfilms.com
http://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Received on Sat Apr 02 2011 - 09:26:27 CDT
