Previously at the ICA - AFC, Films

For the Damaged Right Eye: the short films of Toshio Matsumoto

27 Jun 2018

Presented together for the first time in the UK, this screening presents a rare selection of short works by the pioneering Japanese filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto (1932–2017).

In his films and videos, Matsumoto continued decades-long experiments with form and subject in numerous technically and aesthetically prevocational shorts, colliding traditions with popular post-war culture. The programme borrows its title from Matsumoto’s multi-channel work of the same name, reflecting his persistent assaults on the senses and his questioning and challenging of conventions. His works are as unique today as when they were first produced in the last decades of the 20th century. Matsumoto’s key works such as Atman (1975) and Engram (1987) are screened alongside his experiments on film and early video synthesizer works Metastasis (1971) and Mona Lisa (1973), in addition to the groundbreaking multi-projection For The Damaged Right Eye (1968).

This programme of short films is accompanied by a screening of Matsumoto’s first narrative feature film Funeral Parade of Roses, recently restored from the original 35mm negatives, as part of a two-part programme featuring the director’s trailblazing work.

Programme:

Engram, 1987, 16 mm, colour, sound, 12 min

Metastasis, 1971, 16 mm, colour, sound, 8 min

Phantom, 1975, 16 mm, colour, sound, 10 min

Mona Lisa, 1973, 16mm, colour, sound, 3 min

Relation, 1982, 16 mm, colour, sound, 9 min

Atman, 1975, 16 mm, colour, sound, 11 min

Shift, 1982, 16 mm, colour, sound, 9 min

Everything Visible is Empty, 1975 16 mm, colour, sound, 8 min

Vibration, 1985, 8 mm, colour, sound, 3 min

For The Damaged Right Eye, 1968, 16 mm x 3, colour, sound, 13 min

Enigma, 1978, 16 mm, colour, sound, 3 min

All the films in this programme are digital restorations of original materials.

Go to Artists' Film Club

Toshio Matsumoto (b. 1932, Nagoya, d. 2017, Tokyo) began his filmmaking career with the Shin-Riken Film Company before working on several avant-garde documentaries including The Weavers of Nishijin (1961) and Mothers (1967). Drawing on influences from pre- and post-war European avant-garde film, his experimentation with the documentary form earned him several awards for his visionary approaches to filmmaking. Breaking with the single channel film tradition, Matsumoto embarked on multi-projections in the hyper-sensory with For the Damaged Right Eye (1968), and later with the installation Space Projection Ako (1970) for the Textiles Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Matsumoto continued to make three further feature-length films alongside a prolific number of experimental film and video works. Matsumoto’s subjects ranged from those of symbolism and iconography to landscape and architecture, through which he experimented with testing aesthetics and form and colliding tradition with global pop cultures and their inadvertent political tensions.