CCJ is pleased to partner with Art Saloon to present the works of Masanobu Nakamura. Curator, producer, and filmmaker Akihiro Suzuki has specially selected eight titles for CCJ’s members’ viewing, which will be presented over three months.
PROGRAM
September
Bizarre Disease 1 / 奇病１｜1977, 3 min, 16mm, color
Commemorative Photo / 記念写真｜1978, 3 min, 16mm, color
Summer Is Gone｜1978, 30 min, 16mm, color
October
The Beautiful Days / 美しい日々｜1970, 10 min, 8mm, color
Another Life｜1976, 11 min, 8mm, color
Spring Has Come｜1977, 18 min, 8mm, color
November
Omen / 兆（KIZASHI)｜1988, 13 min, 16mm, color
The Collection / 蒐集｜1989, 11 min, 16mm, color
“Masanobu Nakamura’s world is certainly one of eroticism, of a certain kind. But what distinguishes his films from the great mass of merely titillating soft-core material out there is the peculiarly obsessive gaze he turns on his subjects.
What draws me to Nakamura’s films is the way their lyricism, sensual to the point of morbidity, oozes out of the screen in phases of the film where it seems unintended and unstoppable. His images cannot help but make the heart flutter, the nostrils wrinkle, the viscera experience the bluntness of an instrument plunging menacingly toward the subjects. Nakamura’s films live and breathe, exerting a bizarre force, a devilish élan that pulls us inexorably into a world of both sweetness and depravity.”
Toshio Matsumoto (translated by Colin Smith) (1)
Masanobu Nakamura began making 8mm films in 1969, when Japan’s season of revolutionary politics was drawing to a close, and went on to work in diverse media, creating and releasing more than 40 films in 8mm, 16mm, and video formats by 1987. His unique world, which carries on the 1960s underground’s transgressive legacy while delving into more personal desires and representations, overflows with freedom and venom worthy of the term “post-underground cinema.” Maintaining distance from the worlds of academia and commercial cinema, he consistently pursued his own singular approach including shooting, editing, and producing music for his own films, and his work inimitably fuses a fetishistic gaze and experimental methodologies. As 8mm equipment became more widely available from the 1970s onward, experimental and privately produced films emphasizing personal expression and sensibilities rather than collective ideologies and political movements became prevalent in Japan. Nakamura was among the pioneers of this current in Japanese film, and as a filmmaker who defies categorization, remains an extraordinary figure to this day.
Selected films of Masanobu Nakamura are also streaming on Art Saloon. https://art-saloon.site/
Introduction by Akihiro Suzuki, translated by Colin Smith.
(1) Toshio Matsumoto, "The Charm of Delusion [Mōsō no miwaku]," RA MU NE No.15 (September 1979, Marble Refining Factory [Bīdama seiren kōjō]).
Our Monthly Members Viewing is a Members only program that provides a month-long access to selected works under CCJ’s research. During the month, members can enjoy the selected work(s) as part of the membership benefits. Sign-up here to become a member.
SHOWING THROUGH SEPTEMBER
Bizarre Disease 1 / 奇病１｜1977, 3 min, 16mm, color
In this short film, two girls playing in the woods are captured with improvisational camera work. The film’s intentional lack of editing creates a charmingly poetic and erotic mood. Shown at the 100 Feet Film Festival, it consists of only one 100-foot reel.
Commemorative Photo / 記念写真｜1978, 3 min, 16mm, color
An extraordinary animated work composed of 99 still images. The bizarre story of the mechanized walking doll “Margaret” kidnapping and confining a female student in a sailor-style school uniform is realized with a precisely calculated method of full in-camera editing of one 100-foot reel. The filmmaker himself appears in this humorous, radical Pop film, one of Nakamura’s best-known works.
Summer Is Gone｜1978, 30 min, 16mm, color
The viewer spends a pleasant 30 minutes enfolded in the agreeably lazy atmosphere generated by repeating images and minimalist music that characterize Nakamura’s films. The rhythm of repetitions, subtle deviations, and memories evoked by momentary images transform the scenery of an actual street into a world of daydreams. Nakamura’s distinctive trance film has earned high international acclaim.
Masanobu Nakamura
Masanobu Nakamura was born in Shizuoka in 1949. After joining a film society at his university he spontaneously purchased an 8mm camera, and completed his first film, Disorder (1969), without any filmmaking expertise, learning by doing. Another Life (1976), which employs the technique of re-shooting filmed images on screen, was highly praised by Toshio Matsumoto and others, and he gained attention as an innovative new presence in experimental film.
He participated in the 100 Feet Film Festival, showing the 16mm works Bizarre Disease 1 (1977) and Commemorative Photo (1978). Takahiko Iimura arranged for Nakamura’s Summer is Gone (1978) to be screened overseas.
In the 1980s, Nakamura prolifically released experimental and provocative 16mm films. In 1985 he made Preview using a home video camera, and went on to make other films in various formats including 8mm, 16mm, and video. After premiering the controversial 142-minute For the Films That Are To Be Buried Alive (1989), which blends 8mm and 16mm, he began exploring new modes of landscape theory. He created works dealing with landscape and memory using 8mm film and Hi8 video, concluding with The Ghost of Memories (1997).
Akihiro Suzuki
Born in 1961, Akihiro Suzuki is a producer and filmmaker who predominantly works in the field of underground culture-related projects, and has directed, distributed, produced, and organized film festivals and screenings. He is also the director of S.I.G. Inc., and the underground online cinematheque, Art Saloon. Representative directorial works include Looking for an Angel (1999), Lunar Child (2009) and Artaud Double (2013), a film of the performance by Masahiko Akuta and Ko Murobushi. Production projects include I Like You, I Like You Very Much (directed by Hiroyuki Oki) and Syabondama Elegy (directed by Ian Kerkhof). Film festival projects include the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Underground Archives, among others.
