Toshi Ichiyanagi – { feuilleton }

Atman, a film by Toshio Matsumoto

Atman was made four years after Metastasis in 1975, and shares similar features: another static object—a woman sitting outdoors wearing a hannya demon mask from the Noh theatre—is seen from different angles in a succession of crash zooms and encircling jump cuts. Infra-red film gives the scene its lurid colouring this time; as in as in Metastasis the picture occasionally bleaches to white. Toshi Ichiyanagi once again provides an electronic soundtrack. Ten minutes of this makes for a very strange film. Watch it here.

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• Metastasis, a film by Toshio Matsumoto

Metastasis, a film by Toshio Matsumoto

Or Toshio’s Psychedelic Toilet. Toshio Matsumoto is known to cineastes for feature films such as Funeral Parade of Roses (which I’ve still not seen—sorry, Thom!), but he’s also responsible for a number of experimental films like this one. In Metastasis (1971) we watch a toilet bowl for 9 minutes while the colours and contrast shift continually. Matsumoto said (in a scrambled quote):

I used the Erekutoro Karapurosesu (Electro Color Processor), which is mainly used in the field of medicine and engineering, to create moving image textures Metastasis, I was interested in layering images of a simple object and its electronically processed abstraction. The electronic abstract image is manipulated in a certain rhythm, depicting an organic process.

This might be tedious if it didn’t also have a decent electronic score by Toshi Ichiyanagi. Watch it here.