The world of Mari Terashima
From UNDISTURBED SACRAMENT OF PLAY (2011)
Our June membership feature is focused on the underground filmmaker Mari Terashima, with two works that beckon the viewer ‘through the looking glass,’ into the dark, fantastic territory of dream and desire. A former student of the Kyoto College of Art whose teachers included Toshio Matsumoto, Terashima’s boundary-pushing works tread a terrain rarely occupied within the Japanese experimental canon. Themes from history and literature abound in her films, as do the stylised aesthetics of the subcultures of the 90’s and 00’s. As she interweaves the gothic and the decorative, the occult and the grotesque, into finely wrought, exquisite works of film, Mari Terashima’s world is escapist and arresting in equal measure.
The two films in our June program both follow young female protagonists as they are liberated from spaces of confinement. These spaces - an invalid aristocrat’s stately home, in her 1989 First Love, and a schoolteacher’s classroom, in UNDISTURBED SACRAMENT OF PLAY (2011) - are governed by older, male figures, and are characterised not only by a sense of menace, but by stagnancy and boredom. When the young girls eventually escape, it is into worlds of unregulated fantasy and visceral experience: seductive and dangerous, yet overflowing with meaning.
June Member’s Viewing
Mari Terashima, First Love (初恋), 1989, 22 minutes, 8mm
Mari Terashima, UNDISTURBED SACRAMENT OF PLAY (つつがなき遊技の秘蹟), 2011, 27 minutes, high-definition videotape
Become a member for just $5 a month to enjoy Terashima’s works, and don’t forget to share your thoughts with us on Twitter, Instagram or Letterboxd.
The programs will be available for viewing on CCJ’s viewing platform.
This Members Viewing program is supported, in part, by a grant from the Toshiba International Foundation.
program
First Love (初恋), 1989, 22 minutes, 8mm
A girl lives under the watch of an older man in a isolated, rural villa. When a young boy (played by the same actress) disturbs the stillness to spy on the girl with his telescope, the film erupts into a series of magical transformations that suggest the arcane and the alchemical.
“At first glance, this work may seem unsettling. But even so, what I felt at the time of its creation was energy pouring down from the universe, which one might call "love." I created this work with that in mind. It is, however, a work with a strong Gothic flavour.
“What these two works have in common is that they were produced by my own interest in the world of spirituality. However, I have a feeling that soon these "spiritual" genres will become obsolete, and in that sense, they will become retro, or old-fashioned.”
UNDISTURBED SACRAMENT OF PLAY (つつがなき遊技の秘蹟), 2011, 27 minutes, high-definition videotape
A young schoolgirl flees a stifling science lesson and its sinister professor, escaping the school laboratory to meet a series of characters who involve her in a mysterious occult ceremony. Told through a series of blinking vignettes, the film has the quality of an antique storybook, and was made to mark the third anniversary of the gothic subculture café and gallery Zaroff in Hatsudai, Shibuya.
The work features the actor Mame Yamada (Blue Spring, Strange Circus), who also appeared in Terashima’s 2009 film, Alice in the Underworld: The Dark Märchen Show!!” Yamada plays a kindergarten child who threatens the high-schooler heroine, yet also beckons her into an another dimension, “an astral world.”
“After meeting people in this other dimension,” writes Terashima, “the high-school girl also meets the self hidden inside her, and then goes back to her original world. In fact, I think maybe everyone has had an experience like this without realizing it. I turned [this idea] into a work.”
MARI TERASHIMA
Mari Terashima is a filmmaker. She was born in 1965. She enrolled in a film making course at Kyoto College of Art (Kyoto University of the Art) in 1985, and studied with filmmakers such as Matumoto Toshio. Her 8mm film, Green Bug/Midorimushi won a grand prize at the Image Forum Festival. Two of her works, The Polyester Dog of Her Majesty the Queen/Joou heika no poriesuteru ken and Shot. Cut. Lovers. were selected for Maniacs of Disappearance, an exhibition that was commissioned by the Japan Foundation, and it was exhibited across twelve countries. She joined Split Film Festival in Croatia, and Yamgata International Documentary Film Festival, Japan with Princess Plum P-udding/Himekorogashi in 1999. Alice in the Underworld: The Dark Märchen Show!!, which was commissioned as the 18th original video work produced by the Aichi Arts Center, was officially invited to be exhibited at the 40th Rotterdam International Film Festival. Her personal documentary (self-documentary), Diary of a Rambling Woman / Chūbura onna moyamoya nikki: danna ni ienai himitsu gained an audience award at the Image Forum Festival 2016.
(Bio written by Wakae Nakane)