ANGURA!

Discovering underground and avant-garde art from Japan

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3rd Annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival: July 21-24

Escape the heat tomorrow for the opening of the 3rd Annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival. Programmed by Chris MaGee (Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow) and Jasper Sharp (Midnight Eye), the festival showcases the best of Japanese independent film. My must-see screenings are the feature length animation by Keita Kurosaka Midori-ko (Fri Jul 22 - 9pm) and the CALF Animation Showcase (Sun Jul 23 - 1pm), which features many new works by artists from my Seconds Under the Sun programme (2009-2010). 

See you there!

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‘Theatre Scorpio: Japanese Independent and Experimental Cinema of the 1960s’ runs 12–28 July at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club over the next four Tuesdays in July. Related events run at Flat Time House and Birkbeck College.

The Art Theatre Guild’s 50th anniversary is celebrated in a retrospective at the BFI Southbank through July. Alexander Jacoby surveys the legacy of the ATG in the August 2011 issue of Sight & Sound.

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July 30-31: Kanai Katsu Introduces The Kingdom in London

Kanai Katsu, director of The Kingdom and other amazing experimental films, emailed me to say that he'll be attending a symposium in London as guest director. If you're in the city save the date and be sure to check this out! He's a legend of Japanese cinema!

The Art Theatre Guild of Japan: Spaces for Intercultural and Intermedial Cinema

A two-day symposium on 30th & 31st July 2011 at the Gordon Square Cinema, Birkbeck College, University of London CFP

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Toshio Matsumoto - Experimental Film Works 1961-1987

Rare 3 DVD Box Set from my personal library.

I've decided to use my personal collection as a jumping off point for posts - there's just too much out there to share! Since I'm a lover of objects and have amassed a pretty extensive library of books and DVDs, I will sharing what I've collected here as a sort of visual bibliographic list. 

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Toshio Matsumoto - Phantom (1975)

Watch more of his experimental film works on Ubu Web

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Keiichi Tanaami, dark magician of electric cinema. Keiichi Tanaami, conjuror of color television. Keiichi Tanaami, manager of the mental discotheque. Keiichi Tanaami, old man of the New York photogram store. Keiichi Tanaami, colorist of the world that comes from the absence of substance. Keiichi Tanaami, designer of young girls' beards. Keiichi Tanaami, zen-like meditation of the sales agent of the erotic. Keiichi Tanaami, artisan of the non-advertising neon sign shop. Keiichi Tanaami, Kannon Bodhisattva of electric coloring pictures. Keiichi Tanaami, spectre of copper engraving. Keiichi Tanaami, UFO swindler. Keiichi Tanaami, student of the color who insists that shadows too are many hued.

Introduction by Shuji Terayama

Exhibition Catalogue "Far From the Film - Keiichi Tanaami" 1975, Image Forum (Tokyo Japan)

Translated in A Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami 14 Films 1975-2009

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Poster by Andrew Remington Bailey. Check out his artwork on his blog He Has Antlers.

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KEIICHI TANAAMI ANIMATION RETROSPECTIVE SCREENINGS: Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal

TORONTO SCREENING

Saturday April 23rd – 8pm

CineCycle (behind 129 Spadina Ave)

$8 / $5 students

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Keiichi Tanaami, born in 1936, is one of the preeminent pop artists of postwar Japan, producing a broad range of works since the 60s including experimental film and animation, woodblock printing, illustration, and editorial design. Tanaami’s imagery is provocative and playful, rooted in the realm of avant garde 60s pop psychedelia. In 1967 Tanaami took his first trip to New York where he discovered the works of Andy Warhol. These experiences opened him up to new artistic directions and in 1975 he became the first Art Director of Playboy Monthly (Japanese Edition). He has worked as a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design since 1991, and his work continues to be exhibited around the world.

Screening in Toronto for the first time, these 10 animated works offer an introduction to Tanaami’s various styles and a trip through the eye-popping world of free form Japanese psychedelia. This event will also celebrate his newest release, A Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami: 14 Films 1975-2009, a beautiful edition containing a hard cover book with never-before published drawings for animated films, 14 films from 1975-2009, and two documentaries about the man himself, available for purchase at the screening.  

This event is a fundraiser to aid the victims of the earthquake in Japan and has been made possible by the generosity of: Keiichi Tanaami, CaRTe bLaNChe, Toronto Animated Image Society, and CineCycle.

  All proceeds will go to the Red Cross Japan Earthquake Fund

  Presented by:

ANGURA! / Toronto Animated Image Society / CaRTe bLaNChe

WINNIPEG SCREENING - Friday May 6th at Plastic Paper: Winnipeg's Festival of Animated, Illustrated + Puppet Film

MONTREAL SCREENING - Saturday May 21st at Blue Sunshine Psychotronic Film Centre

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It is in the memory of John Cage and the victims that were silenced by the recent earthquake in Japan that we ask you to download one minute of silence and wherever you are, whatever you are doing pause and experience ‘ma’.

Donate through the Polyphasic Recordings website.

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TICKET GIVEAWAYS!! Toronto Reel Asian Int'l Film Festival

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The leaves have turned and spooks are out which means that the 14th annual Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival is upon us! Instead of candy, ANGURA! is giving away one double-pass to each of the following screenings. --------- GOLDEN SLUMBER (ゴールデンスランバー) | FRI NOV 12 | 10:00 PM http://www.reelasian.com/index.php/2010-festival/full-festival-schedule/details/127-golden-slumber KOJI YAMAMURA: MASTERY OF THE FORM | SAT NOV 13 | 12:00 PM http://www.reelasian.com/index.php/2010-festival/full-festival-schedule/details/128-koji-yamamura-mastery-of-the-form DEAR DOCTOR (ディア ドクター) FEATURE PRESENTATION | SUN NOV 14 | 2:00 PM http://www.reelasian.com/index.php/2010-festival/full-festival-schedule/details/133-dear-doctor ONE BIG HAPA FAMILY | SUN NOV 14 | 4:45 PM http://www.reelasian.com/index.php/2010-festival/full-festival-schedule/details/134-one-big-hapa-family --------- To enter, email ANGURA! ([email protected]) by MON NOV 1st at midnight telling us what your favourite Japanese ghost/monster/fictional creature is and which of the 4 screenings you'd like to attend. The winners will be drawn and notified on Tues Nov 2nd.  The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival runs from Nov 9-15. Check out their full festival schedule here:http://www.reelasian.com/

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ANGURA! store page up and away

The ANGURA! store page is now up with a few items by the artist Daisuke Ichiba - limited edition prints by Halo Halo, and Ichiba's newest self-published book Midaregami, which features reproductions of his recent paintings. 

Check it out!

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Some photos from our Kanai Katsu screening on Oct 1st. It was the first event in our new venue (my warehouse apartment). Thanks to all of those who helped make it a duck-pokingly spectacular night!

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Film stills from Kanai Katsu's The Kingdom (1973)

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Film stills from Kanai Katsu's The Deserted Archipelago (1969)

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"The Deserted Archipelago" is a surreal political tale, a film entirely of it's time. By the late 60's and early 70's the leftist student movements who had mobilized against the U.S.-Japan Security treaty, better known as the ANPO Treaty, had splintered and re-splintered into ever smaller and more radical groups. By the time that Katsu was making "The Deserted Archipelago" many university campuses in Japan more closely resembled battlegrounds than they did places of learning. While these groups clashed over the finer points of political actions many shared the common goal of throwing off the yoke of U.S. Imperialism in their home country. It's this core idealogy that Kanai explores in his film.

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"The Kingdom" is the third film in Kanai Katsu's avant-garde Smiling Milky Way Trilogy which began with two politically loaded films, 1968's "The Deserted Archipelago", a dream journey through the the post-ANPO Treaty 60's, and 1971's "Good-Bye", an exploratrion of the plight of the zainichi, or Japanese of Korean heritage. "The Kingdom" doesn't take on any loaded current event or momentary societal ill though. Instead it goes to the root of Japanese (and global) society's engine - time - and in that way "The Kingdom" is probably the most radical film in Kanai's trilogy of films.

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Experimental Films of Kanai Katsu - Canadian Premiere

ANGURA! is very proud to present the Canadian Premiere of the work of Kanai Katsu!!

In the late 1960's and early 1970's Tokyo's underground film scene fermented some of the most enlightening, kaleidoscopic, bizarre and pioneering visions. Names such as Shuji Terayama, Toshio Matsumoto, Takahiko Iimura and Nobuhiko Obayashi defined this avant-garde cinema, but one filmmaker, 74-year-old Kanai Katsu, has continued to labour in the underground. Since Kanai independently released a limited edition retrospective DVD box-set of his films his work is being discovered by a whole new generation of film fans and art enthusiasts.

On Friday Oct 1st, ANGURA! will be presenting a double-bill of two of Kanai's defining films - 1969's "The Deserted Archipelago" and 1973's "The Kingdom". Winner of Grand Prize at the 1970 Nyon International Film Festival, "The Deserted Archipelago" plays out like a fever dream of the social and political unrest of the post ANPO-Treaty riots that nearly tore Japan apart during the 1960's. A lone man escapes a life of abuse in a Catholic monastery only to face male-pregnancy, insanity and a machine gun toting nun on his road to Japan's Parliament building. "The Kingdom" encorporates surrealism and pinku eiga techniques of momentary flashes of colour footage to take us on one young man's battle to fuse with the natural world and to conquer time. PLUS! There will be a special performance by Toronto-based acousmatic / tape music / psychedelic duo GASTRIC FEMALE REFLEX between the films. 

Poster art by Private Press Printing

ADMISSION: $10.00 (includes screening + performance + 1 drink) Doors at 8pm 8:30 -The Deserted Archipelago (無人列島), 55min 9:45 - Gastric Female Reflex 10:15 - The Kingdom (王国), 80min (TTC Directions: Take the #168 from Dundas W Station or #127 from   Station and get off at Laughton. Walk 1/2 block west and go down the alley running north to the second door of the warehouse.) To whet your appetites for this world of Kanai Katsu check out the trailer he put together for his independently produced DVD box set below.

-CM