Ātman, アートマン. 1975. 11 minutes. music by TOSHI ICHIYANAGI

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A 1955 graduate of Tokyo University, TOSHIO MATSUMOTO is a pioneer of avant-garde experimental movies, multimedia, and video in Japan and abroad. His first experimental short was  “Song of the Stones “(1963) but his most famous work is 1969’s wildly experimental “Funeral Parade of Roses”, notorious in Japan for its homosexual imagery (influenced Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange). He has published several photo and art books, and he is currently a professor and dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. MATSUMOTO is also President of the Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences.

ĀTMAN is a visual tour-de-force based on the idea of the subject at the centre of the circle created by camera positions (480 such positions). Shooting frame-by-frame the filmmaker set up an increasingly rapid circular motion. ĀTMAN is an early Buddhist deity often connected with destruction; the Japanese aspect is stressed by the devil mask of Hangan, from the Noh, and by using both Noh music and the general principle of acceleration often associated with Noh drama.

“Looking at this film, I thought that everybody has a mystery that is hidden in some deep part of one’s heart, and the act of personally finding out what that is, the act of wanting to know who you are by means of that, perhaps is what we call expression… Amid the escalating images I seemed to notice the shape of an artist who was groping around like mad. By encountering this work my creative desire exploded” -by Japanese filmmaker TAKASHI ITO

MATSUMOTO’s films are the type that demand to be experienced rather than passively observed. So take a seat and enjoy!

ps. if you want to see more films by TOSHIO MATSUMOTO, follow this link!