Scratch Projection: F O C U S
Tuesday 12 February 2013, 20:30h
Cinéma Action Christine
4, rue Christine, 75006 Paris

Program introduced by Erwin van ‘t Hart (International Film Festival of Rotterdam and freelance programmer)

Zen for film, a retreat in the cinema. Complex film structures leading to a coherent visual experience, striving for simplicity and ultimately: nothingness. Films by Nicholas Brooks, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Fred Worden, Takahiko Iimura and Paul Sharits will fill the space. An invitation to sit and contemplate.
How to prepare for a choreographic etude for unusual objects, a symmetrical film concept with two distinct centers, a celestial space filled with spherical light flares, a balanced superimposition of natural and rectangular form or a complex narrative of solid color harmonies? A quote by Arata Isozaki from the text of the film Ma: Space/Time from the Garden of Ryoan-ji will lead the way.

Perceive not the objects
but the distance
between them
not the sounds
but the pauses
they leave unfilled

Takahiko Iimura is considered one of the most influential and important experimental filmmakers of our time. In an era of the explosion of Underground Film in the States, Iimura, almost alone in Tokyo, began making experimental film just reading the news

The new DVD, not just a transfer of video, extends further with text, and graphics, which work interactively. In \\\"Hearing / Speaking\\\", for instance, you can choose among the monitors with the picture of face, head, ear and mouth in the video-install

Junk; Ai (Love); On Eye Rape; A Dance Party in the Kingdom of Lilliput. Four films from one of the first generation of NY underground experimental filmmakers, films from a golden age of experimentation.

Takahiko Iimura: Writing with light
Films and live performance by Takahiko Iimura
Saturday December 10, 19h, Admission $6
MICROSCOPE, 4 Charles Place Bushwick Brooklyn NY 11221

Microscope Gallery is very happy to welcome back from Tokyo Japanese master of experimental cinema Takahiko Iimura. The show will feature the NY premieres of several of Iimura’s works on film, as well as a special Super 8mm performance White Calligraphy, Re-read where Iimura will write with light. Not to be missed.

Programme:

Eye For Eye, Ear For Ear (NY Premiere)
featuring:
- Film Strips I (1967-1970/2009) 12 min, music by Haruyuki Suzuki (2009)
- Film Strips II (1967-70/2009) 13 min, music by Haruyuki Suzuki (2009)

“The best work of Iimura’s middle period is characterized by increasingly formal concerns, concerns most effectively demonstrated by Film Strips I and II (1967-70). Film Strips II […] resulted in an experience which is not only interesting visually, but which is implicitly a powerful record of a painful time and a warning about the future.”
– Scott MacDonald (Afterimage, April, 1978 (The author of “Critical Cinema,” California Univ. Press)

“When I came to the USA in the mid 1960s, it was the high point of the Hippie movement and the black riots. I lived in the East Village in New York, which was a center of the former, and watched TV news of the latter often. These two films, Film Strips I and II, were taken from the scenes respectively, not as a documentary but as an inner report of mine, abstracted yet chaotic.” — Taka Iimura

Takahiko Iimura: Between The Frames
March 19 – April 11, 2011
Microscope Gallery
4 Charles Place, Brooklyn NY 11221
Opening Reception Saturday March 19, 18-21h
with live 16mm projection performance of the ever-changing “Circle and a Square”

Microscope Gallery is honored to present the first Brooklyn solo exhibition of the film and video pioneer Takahiko Iimura. Between The Frames is a comprehensive exhibition featuring works made from 1975 to the present, many of which are constantly evolving. The new suspended installation “400 frames” uses ink drawings from 1975. A new print series “MA: The Stones Have Moved” are made from digital drawings related to his 2004 animated video of a Zen garden in Kyoto of the same title. Also on display: Iimura’s famous 1993 “funny faces” silkscreens and video game installation based on Derridda’s “Differance” dealing with physicality of language “AIUEONN Six Features“, never-before-seen sculptures made from 16mm film loop and more.

Iimura has been working with the moving image on film since the 60s and video since the early 70s. After moving to New York in the late 60s became involved with the avant garde scene along side Yoko Ono and Nam Jun Paik and is recognized as one of the most important Japanese artists today. His work is shown widely with numerous solo shows including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery Jeu de Paume, Paris, Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo. Iimura currently lives and works in Tokyo and NYC.

“His [Iimura’s] Japanese origins contributed decisively to his uncompromising explorations of cinema’s minimalist and conceptual possibilities. He has explored this direction of cinema in greater depth than anyone else. To review all of Iimura’s work…is an important occasion for all who are concerned with the development and pleasure of cinema as an art.” — Jonas Mekas

no.w.here and Takahiko Iimura present: How To Make Time Visible In Film
Wednesday October 6th, 19-22h
no.w.here, First Floor
316 - 318 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 OAG

Takahiko Iimura has been a pioneer Japanese artist of experimental film and video since 1960. Residing in both Tokyo and New York, Iimura has had numerous exhibitions in Japan, the US, and Europe. One of his early films, ONAN, was awarded Special Prize at the legendary Brussels International Experimental Festival. Recently, he has been working with computers, publishing multimedia CD-ROMs and DVDs of his films, videos, graphics, texts, as well as photographic works. Perhaps the most enigmatic figure in avant-garde cinema/video, Takahiko Iimura mediates Zen spirituality and technology with playful irony.

For this unique workshop to be held at no.w.here, Iimura will be exploring how participants can make time visible in film, (without photography), using markers of different colors and sizes, long and fat needles, clear and black 16mm film. The workshop will include screenings of original Iimura prints sourced from the Lux, (to whom our thanks are due), including;

- 24 Frames Per Second 1975
- One Frame Duration 1977
- 2 Min. 46 Sec. 16 Frames (100 Feet) 1972
- Timed 1, 2, 3 1972
- (Timing 1,2,3,4 1972)
- (Timelength 1,2,3,4 1972)
- 1 To 60 Seconds 1973

Close-Up: Seeing/Hearing/Speaking – The Films of Takahiko Iimura + Live Performance
Tuesday October 5th, Time: 20h, Doors open at 19.45h
Venue: The Working Men’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB
Ticket: £5/£3 to Close-Up members

This programme is a survey of the work of Japan's most influential experimental filmmaker, Takahiko Iimura, from his earliest 1960s experiments and conceptual videos to his later videos on semiology and identity. Takahiko Iimura will perform CIRCLE AND SQUARE and be in attendance for Q&A moderated by Julian Ross.

"Taka Iimura has been making films since the early 1960s. His work has gone through a series of relatively clear, consistent developments: from 1962 to 1968, Iimura was largely involved with surreal imagery, with eroticism, and with social criticism; from 1968 through 1971, he continued to use photographic imagery, but worked with it in increasingly formal ways; from 1972 until 1978, he devoted himself very largely to a series of minimalist explorations of time and space. During the years since, Iimura has been more fully involved with video than with film." — Scott MacDonald

"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

Japanese Experimental Cinema: An Evening with Takahiko Iimura
Monday October 11th 2010, 18:30h, free entrance
ICS Cinema, University of Leeds, Woodhouse, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom

Cherry Kino 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.

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.

Taka iimura and Haruyuki Suzuki: Experimental video / live music concert
Friday, March 26, 2010, 9:00pm $4.99
Exprimental Intermedia, 224 Centre Street at Grand,
Third Floor, NY, Subway: Canal Street Station #6, 212 431 5127, 431 6430

Part one - videos by Iimura with electronic music by Suzuki:
- A Rock In The Light, 1985/2008, 18min.
- Eye For Eye, Ear For Ear, 1967-70/2008, 2 films, 25min.

"the best work of Iimura's middle period …a powerful record of a painful time and a warning about the future."- Scott MacDonald

Part two - solo performance by Suzuki.

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Taka iimura: Film Performance in Film
Friday, April 9, 2010 7:30pm Tel.: (212) 505-5181 $9
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, New York, NY Subway:2nd Ave.#F,V

“Film Performance in Film” (rather than “Performance Film”):
- Anma (TheMasseurs), 1963-2007, 20min., with Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Music:Tomomi Adachi
- Performance / Myself (Or Video Identity), 1972-1995, 7 films, 29min., with Takahiko iimura and Akiko iimura.
- Talking Picture (The Structure of Film Viewing), 1981-2009, 2 films 23 min.

"Prodded by a succession of riddles, the videos are lined with humor” - Aaron Michael Kerner, San Francisco State University