Movies: Toshio Matsumoto

A five-part documentary chronicling Toshio Matsumoto, the legendary filmmaker known as a pioneer of experimental cinema in Japan and also active as a film theorist, who exerted a profound influence on innovative film expression from the 1950s onward....

Towards the end of WWII, a black American pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their 'catch'....

A young man kills his bride on the day of his marriage and goes insane. He wakes up in an asylum with no memory, left in the hands of two mysterious doctors who relate his condition with his biological identity....

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware...

A young drifter and a precocious sixteen years old girl slowly form a bond in a small town haunted by its wartime past....

Tells the story of the samurai Gengobe, who seeks revenge after falling prey to the schemes of a geisha and her husband....

The Weavers of Nishijin captures the process of traditional textile manufacture in Nishijin....

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 Buddh...

A documentary on sixties counterculture in Japan featuring Donald Richie, Tadanori Yokoo, Masao Adachi, Koji Wakamatsu, Toshio Matsumoto and Akaji Maro among others....

Documentary about the relationships between mothers and their children....

A kaleidoskopic image of Andy Warhol, presumably found footage from some interview, is slowed down and played over sudden pangs of screeching white noise. Warhol's own distorted, delayed, voice guides us through the gaseous hallucination....

A surrealist commercial for bicycles....

An early experimental film by Toshio Matsumoto. Produced as part of the student riots in Japan at the start of the 1960s, Matsumoto uses collage, archival footage, and impassioned narration to create an expressive, visceral criticism of the US-Japan ...

Expansion remixes the images of Matsumoto’s Esctasis into an more colourful psychedelic short....

The film is a promotional film, recording the construction of a pressurized lockbox at the Hachinohe power plant in Aomori. Matsumoto's official first directorial debut at the Shinriken Motion Picture, the film found a 16mm film print stored in a civ...

Early experimental PR "cine-poem" by Toshio Matsumoto. Commissioned by Kansai Electricity, the film paints an abstract, near-wordless retelling of the development of power stations in Japan, through to the presumed oncoming advent of nuclear power....

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expre...

There's more to picture than meets the eye in this journey into oriental metaphysical imagery. Starting (in a very Christian manner) with the Word, the film draws an explosion of visible forms, as if a sign of the shattering of shapes in the mundane ...

Two chaotic series of images, one for each eye. Hipster living, malformed fetuses, war, arts events and pop culture stands for the material....

While extracting and polishing their blocks of stone, stonecutters used to say “the stone is coming to life". This paradox provided Matsumoto with the best metaphor for what making a film is all about. In his opinion, filmmakers work images in the sa...