Japanese experimental filmmaking by Tomonari Nishikawa
The Structuring Strategies screening series welcomes filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa to CalArts tonight (April 19) for a program of his hand-crafted films as well as a collection of Japanese experimental Super8 films.
The Japanese filmmaker and installation artist is currently based in upstate New York, where he’s a visiting cinema artist at Binghamton University. His works have been shown internationally, including the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Late last year, the Portland, Ore.,-based nonprofit for avant-garde films, Cinema Project, along with Disjecta, Portland’s contemporary art center, held a three-day exhibition focusing on Nishikawa’s films, an artist lecture and the opening of his Yamanote Loop installation.
Here’s how the event’s curators described Nishikawa’s work:
Nishikawa’s approach may seem scientific—a search for organic patterns, a critical examination through single-framing techniques, multiple lenses, or dual projection—and yet the resulting images are more playful and lyrical. [Nishikawa says:] ‘As a painter carries a sketchbook, I carry a Super-8 camera and do single-framing as an everyday exercise to sharpen my filmmaker’s eye, thinking about apparent shapes and movements.’ Extending from the screen, Nishikawa also creates installation pieces, often using pinhole cameras as his starting point to bring attention to spatial arrangements….
Structuring Strategies presents
Hand-crafted films by Tomonari Nishikawa
CalArts’ Bijou Theater
Tuesday, April 19
7 pm
Free