Japanese Experimental Cinema: An Evening with Takahiko Iimura

Cherry Kino and the University of Leeds presents: 

Japanese Experimental Cinema: An Evening with Takahiko Iimura

Date: October 11th 2010

Time: 18:30-21:00

Venue: ICS Cinema (Clothworkers North Building LT 2.31), University of Leeds

Price: FREE

Takahiko Iimura is an experimental filmmaker, video artist and writer on experimental film who has been working with the moving image since the 1960s. His work explores the relationship between media, time and language and has strived to redefine the exhibition of cinema as a mode of performance. He has worked closely with members of the Hi-Red Centre and Fluxus, as well as Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, John Cage, Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek and many others, bridging boundaries between film, art and performance. He moved to New York in 1966 and has since been a conduit of intercultural communication between Japan and America, introducing Japanese experimental cinema to the West and vice versa. He recently began self-releasing his work on DVD and continues to travel around the world to show his films.

"Although Taka was and continues to be an active part of the New York avant-garde scene, he always remained an enigmatic, mysterious presence, pursuing his own unique route through the very center of the avant-garde cinema. While the intensity and the fire of the American avant-garde film movement inspired him and attracted him, his Japanese origins contributed decisively to his uncompromising explorations of cinema's minimalist and conceptualist possibilities. He has explored this direction of cinema in greater depth than anyone else." – Jonas Mekas

“From early sixties, though Japanese, Iimura was well known as one of the first generation of the New York Underground ... For many years, Japanese experimental film was Takahiko Iimura” - Malcolm Le Grice 

Cherry Kino (http://cherrykino.blogspot.com/) and the CWC-MCN University of Leeds have invited Takahiko Iimura to join our screening of a selection of his films, which will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker himself. Many thanks to WREAC (www.wreac.org) who are helping us fund the event and ICS who kindly offered their venue.

Other dates in the UK include:

October 5th: London, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club: Screening/Performance/Q&A with Julian Ross (http://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film-program/5-october-2010-seeing-hear...)

October 6th: London, Nowhere Lab: Workshop/Screening: http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/index.php?cat=3&subcat=main

October 7th: London, Window Gallery, Central St. Martins, University of Arts London: Screening/Performance/Q&A: http://www.studycollection.org.uk/

October 11th: Leeds, ICS Cinema, University of Leeds with Cherry Kino (www.cherrykino.blogspot.com/)

October 13th: Bristol, Arnolfini (http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/757)

For more information on Takahiko Iimura, please check: www.takaiimura.com/

An interview with Takahiko Iimura (with Julian Ross): http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/takahiko_iimura.shtml

Films:

Ai (Love) (1962) - with music by Yoko Ono

Iro (Colour) (1962-3)

Kuzu (Junk) (1962) - with music by Takehisa Kosugi

One Frame Duration (1977)

Cine-Dance: Anma (1963) - with butoh dancers Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno

Ma: Space/Time at the Garden of Ryoan-ji (1989)

Performance of White Calligraphy (2008)