Three Radical Japanese Filmmakers
Motoharu Jonouchi was instrumental in the formation and gathering of multiple art and anti-art endeavors, including the Nihon University Cinema Club, VAN Film Science Research Center and the Neo-Dadaists, often sharing work space and living with others to establish a center of creative exchange. Gewaltopia Trailer and Shinjuku Station, part of the “Gewaltopia” (gewalt=violence+utopia) series, are both born from student movements at Nihon University around 1968. In their meticulous assemblage of individual shots of different spaces imbued with the symbolic significance of political confrontation, they reject the theatrics of spectacle, instead establishing a radical materialism in both structure and methodology.
PROGRAM
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Gewaltopia Trailer
Directed by Motoharu Jonouchi.
Japan, 1969, 16mm, black & white, 13 min.
Print source: filmmaker
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Shinjuku Station
Directed by Motoharu Jonouchi.
Japan, 1974, 16mm, black & white, 14 min.
Print source: filmmaker
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Great Society
Directed by Masanori Oe and Marvin Fishman.
US, 1967, digital video, color and b&w, 18 min.
Copy source: filmmaker
Masanori Oe moved to New York after graduating from college in 1966 and began working at Third World film studio with filmmakers like Jonas Mekas and Stan Vanderbeek. After meeting Marvin Fishman at Studio M2, they worked together on Great Society, which is made up of collaged newsreel footage of the Vietnam War, the psychedelic and civil rights movements, and other events—projecting 60s America on six screens with an appropriately overwhelming nuclear finale.
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Phenomenology of Zeitgeist
Directed by Rikuro Miyai.
Japan, 1967, digital video, black & white, 35 min.
Copy source: filmmaker
Rikuro Miyai participated in "Group Image Art (Eizo Geijutsu no Kai)"—a group of avant-garde documentary filmmakers that included Toshio Matsumoto and Shinkichi Noda, among others—and organized the "Unit Pro" film production outfit in the middle of the 1960s. Phenomenology of Zeitgeist documents a "planned happening" set in the city of Shinjuku, from Unit Pro’s office to the action by performance group Zero-Dimension (Zero-Jigen) in front of the Kinokuniya bookshop. Shown in unique multi-screen, it became a masterpiece of documentary and expanded cinema in Japan.
