MOTOHARU JONOUCHI:
THREE SHORT FILMS
29 July 2011
To coincide with the Close-Up Film Centre's Theatre Scorpio season, Flat Time House presents 16mm projections of three short films by Motoharu Jonouchi
The films will be introduced by Go Hirasawa (Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo), editor of Underground Film Archives, and Julian Ross (University of Leeds), curators of the season.
Motoharu Jonouchi was one of the leaders of the Nihon University Film Studies Club and the legendary VAN Film Research Centre where artists enacted cross-disciplinary collaborations to explore the art of film. Jonouchi's camera recorded artistic events, such as 'happening' art by Hi-Red Centre in Hi-Red Centre Shelter Plan as well as socio-political protests in Mass Collective Bargaining at Nihon University (1968). What was most remarkable about Jonouchi was his ability to integrate his personal vision into his documentation, creating a concoction of personal and collective, imaginary and tangible spaces.
"In their meticulous assemblage of individual shots of different spaces imbued with the symbolic significance of political confrontation, [Jonouchi's films] rejected the theatrics of spectacle, instead establishing a radical materialism of spaces in both structure and methodology" [Jonathan M. Hall]
Motoharu Jonouchi Hi-Red Center Shelter Plan (1964) 19', 16mm (still)
HI-RED CENTRE SHELTER PLAN (1964)
Hi-Red Centre were comprised of Genpei Akasegawa, Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Jiro Takamatsu, who enacted 'happening'-style performance art in unusual spaces during the early 1960s in Japan. The film is an extremely rare document of one of their early events, where they hired out a room in the Imperial Hotel and invited many friends and professionals in the art scene to participate in the occasion. The performance parodies Cold War fears and the construction of private bomb-shelters, as they diligently measure each guest's weight and proportions in pretence that they are to build human-size shelters for each individual. Key figures of the art scene make an appearance,
Motoharu Jonouchi Shinjuku Station (1974) 15', 16mm (still)
SHINJUKU STATION (1974)
The Shinjuku district was the epicentre of Tokyo's art scene and the political fever pitch where protests took place on a regular basis during the 1960s. Jonouchi's compilation footage of the area defies documentary imagery and transforms itself into something altogether more poetically subjective, attempting to capture the chaos of the location through his camerawork and editing. In 1974, Jonouchi projected images of the past onto himself whilst reciting Dada-influenced and virtually inaudible poetry generating a cacophony of images and sounds, drawing from and participating in the maelstrom of political and artistic expression during the era.
Motoharu Jonouchi Gewaltopia Trailer (1968) 12', 16mm (still)
GEWALTOPIA TRAILER (1968)
The title Gewaltopia Trailer has a dual meaning in the Japanese language; one meaning for the word yokoku (trailer) could mean a compilation of extracts to promote a film, but it can also mean a prediction, a prophecy for the future as a Gewaltopia (revolt + utopia). The film accumulates footage from his earlier films and arranges them in different contexts, a characteristic style of Jonouchi's who often re-edited his films for each screening and provided different soundtracks. The jarring aural atmosphere, exemplary of the emergent noise-music scene, haunts the screen in an oppressive hypnosis and will seduce you into entrancement.
For the full programme of the Theatre Scorpio season visit closeupfilmcentre.com.
