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Event
The Intensity of the World: An Evening with Tomonari Nishikawa
Sunday April 17, 2011, 7:30pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
The Intensity of the World: An Evening with Tomonari Nishikawa
Tomonari Nishikawa in person! Los Angeles premieres!
At the Spielberg Theater at the Egyptian
6712 Hollywood Blvd. (at Las Palmas), Los Angeles CA 90028
Multiple Los Angeles premieres! Tomonari Nishikawa in person.
Tickets: General $10, Students/seniors $6; free for Filmforum members
Tomonari Nishikawa is one of the leading practitioners of hand-crafted films (usually with celluloid, but sometimes with digital means). The precision of his craft, combined with his consistently roving eye and masterful use of light, tone, and movement leads to works that never cease to marvel with their beauty and intensity. A short show in duration, but these films may overwhelm you with their creativity.
Every film tonight except Market Street is a Los Angeles premiere!
Tomonari Nishikawa is an artist and filmmaker whose works have been screened at film festivals, cinemathques, museums, and other alternative spaces. Along with both film and video projects, he makes installations, and one of them, Building 945, received the 2008 Museum of Contemporary Cinema Grant Award. Nishikawa occasionally works as a film curator. He has been a guest adviser and curator of Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions in Tokyo, and he worked as a programming consultant for 2010 Aichi Art Triennale in Nagoya, Japan. He is one of the founders and currently festival adviser of KLEX: Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival in Malaysia. Nishikawa teaches at Binghamton University.
http://www.tomonarinishikawa.com/
Screening:
Apollo (2003, 6 min., 16mm, sound, US/Japan)
The film was made using several filmmaking techniques, including photogarm, contact printing, optical printing, hand-processing, and shooting 16mm films with a 35mm SLR still camera. The sound was created either scratched off emulsion or images captured on the optical soundtrack area. It shows my interests in materiality, process, and apparatus of cinema.
Shake 'n Bake - work in progress (2006, 3 min. 16mm, sound, US)
This work-in-progress film is made out of an old TV commercial footage, "Shake 'n Bake" products by Kraft Foods. The film was developed with a solution consisting of coffee and baking soda, addressing the similarities between cooking and film processing methods, while exhibiting the sound and visual rhythm created by contact printing technique.
Sketch Film #1 (2005, 3 min., super 8, 18fps, silent, US)
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, making animations by forms found in the public space, regarding the apparent shapes and movements. The entire film was edited in camera, and it was hand-processed.
Sketch Film #2 (2005, 3 min., super 8, 18fps, silent, US)
This is the second Sketch Film. It shows my study especially in apparent shapes a shape that cannot be found in a single frame, but it appears on the screen as an illusion.
Market Street (2005, 5 min., 16mm, silent, US)
All images were filmed on Market Street, one of the main streets in San Francisco. I studied Sketch Film #1 and #2 as reference to make the structure of this film. The visual was carefully composed frame by frame, while shooting on the street. This project was commissioned by Exploratorium and San Francisco Arts Commission for the outdoor screening event, A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005: An Outdoor Centennial Celebration.
Sketch Film #3 (2006, 3 min., super 8, 18fps, silent, US/Japan)
It starts with a series of paired images, a blurred image with diagonal camera movement followed by the same image with static shot. Later, it shows my challenge to produce the apparent depth on the screen by rotating an apparent shape.
Sketch Film #4 (2007, 3 min., super 8, 18fps, silent, US)
My first Sketch Film on color film, Kodachrome, thinking if our visual perception would blend colors and recognize colors that are not in a single frame.
Sketch Film #5 (2007, 3 min., super 8, 18fps, silent, US)
All images had been shot at the site of Marin Headlands County in California. The footage shows the nature in the area, as well as historic buildings originally built for the US Army, including batteries and the Nike Missile Site.
Lumphini 2552 (2009, 3 min., 35mm, 1.33:1, sound, Thailand)
Images were shot entirely with Nikon F3, a still camera, at Lumphini Park in Bangkok, Thailand. The hand-processed visual shows the organic patterns found in the monumental park, constructing the systematic yet emotional rhythms and paces on the screen, accompanied by the sound from the visual information on the optical soundtrack. Lumphini is named for Lumbini, a Sanskrit word of the birthplace of the Buddha in Nepal, and 2552 is the Buddhist year (Buddha Era) of 2009.
16 18 4 (2008, 2.5 min., 35mm, 1.33:1, silent, Japan)
This film was shot with a still camera with 16 lenses, which takes a series of 16 pictures consecutively within a few seconds, working similar to a movie camera or a device that Eadweard Muybridge used to shoot a horse galloping. The camera exposes 16 shots in two rows on the area of two regular 35mm frames. The film shows an event at Tokyo Racecourse, when it was holding the biggest race of the year, Japanese Derby (Tokyo Yushun) in 2008. The excitement of each race lasts about 2 minutes and 30 seconds in this racecourse.
Clear Blue Sky (2006, 4 min., MiniDV, sound, US)
Clear Blue Sky is a study of movements, colors, shapes and their relation to sound. Visual effects are created through, not a lens, but an adjustable slit, which was attached in front of the image sensor chip of a DV camcorder. The video was shot on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Washington Square, San Francisco.
Building 945 (2007, loop, mixed media, sound, US) - 3 min. documentation from MiniDV
A single pinhole image was exposed onto a series of 16mm filmstrips through a window in the Project Space at the Headlands Center for the Arts. The pinhole camera was facing toward the next building, which was identical to the one I was in. I used the woods that had been used for these buildings in the Marin Headlands area for the exterior of the light box. The moving image projected on the back of the light box is a duplicate of the 16mm filmstrips.
Tokyo Ebisu (2010, 5 min., 16mm, sound, Japan)
JR (Japan Railway Company) Yamanote Line is one of the Japan's busiest lines, consisting of 29 stations and running as a loop. The film shows the views from the platforms of 10 stations in Yamanote Line, from Tokyo Station to Ebisu Station clockwise. The in-camera visual effects and the layered soundtrack may exaggerate the sense of the actual locations, while suggesting the equipments that were used for capturing the audio and visual.
Shibuya Tokyo (2010, 10 min., 16mm, sound, Japan)
As a following sequence of Tokyo - Ebisu, this film shows the views around the exits of 20 stations in JR Yamanote Line, from Shibuya Station to Tokyo Station clockwise.
This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support generously provided by American Cinematheque.
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation. 2010 is our 34th year.
Memberships available, $60 single or $95 dual
Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com. www.lafilmforum.org
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LocationSpielberg Theater at the Egyptian
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
United States
Categories
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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