“To review all of Iimura’s work is an important occasion for all who are concerned with the development and pleasures of cinema as an art” (Jonas Mekas)

The most influential figure in Japanese experimental cinema, Takahiko Iimura is a pioneer of expanded cinema, video art and film installations in his native country. Living “in & out” of Japan since the 1960s, Iimura has shown an impressive breadth in his artistic practice that spans decades and various continents. His focus, nevertheless, has remained distinctly material, engaged with the physicality of the media with which he works to bring out the key components of darkness and light that he considers the essence of cinema. Returning to Amsterdam for the first time since his screening at the Nederlands Filmmuseum on his six-month European tour in 1969, our unique program comprise of three distinct sections that highlight his career: the first, a focus on his early Dada-inspired work; the second, a presentation of structuralist film experiments; and the third, an expanded cinema performance. Takahiko Iimura will be present for a Q&A moderated by Julian Ross.

While many commercial film labs are shutting there doors, a counter movement is taking place in the form of the international network of artist-run film labs. The Australian experimental filmmaker, Richard Tuohy – a prominent figure in this cinematic d-i-y turn – sees this new phase for the traditional media as an opportunity; as a chance for the film artist to directly engage with the once inaccessible, now too often discarded tools of the traditional film lab. 

Tuohy's hand crafted cinema presents us with multiple visual manipulations in camera, in printer techniques, in experimental processing procedures and in projection to sculpt an activated and reanimated reality which collectively represent a distinctively cinematic experience. More visual then cerebral, these pictures move, and with an energy unique to film. While covering a range of techniques, strategies and visual themes, they each share the same tenacious unfolding of a set of abstract possibilities from out of singular visual ideas. This program presents eight hand-processed and d-i-y printed 16mm film works from the artists recent output. The films, though diverse, are all highly abstract and tightly structured and share a fascination with the visual possibilities of basic traditional film technology.