Takahiko Iimura
Seeing through the body
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm
Year 1968-2007
Artist(s) Takahiko Iimura
Running time 30 min
Films
FLOWERS (1968/2007) 11'
FACE (1968-69) 19'
Description
FLOWERS
During my stay in New York in the 1960s, at the time of the hippie movement's rise, I filmed body painting performances by artist Kusama Yayoi, accompanied by her performers. Not satisfied with simply documenting her performance, I superimposed images of flowers onto the scene, creating a film poem rather than a documentary, flowers being the symbol of hippie culture, called "flower children."
However, the performance is not always in the foreground; it interweaves like fabric among the superimposed flowers. Another female figure, Akiko Iimura, also appears, dressed in a kimono contrasting with Kusama's scenes. The film ends symbolically with a wide shot showing a flower-patterned dress, hanging without a body, with the Empire State Building in the background. Nearly forty years later, Tomomi Adachi composed music for this film. (T.I.)
FACE
The same year Flowers was made, I met Mario Montez, superstar of Andy Warhol's films, whose name came from Hollywood actress Maria Montez. I was fascinated by Mario's androgynous beauty. In addition to his performance, I filmed those of Donna Kerness, who had appeared in the Kuchar brothers' black comedies from underground cinema, as well as Linda, a close friend. In a microscopic montage where fiction and reality blur, the sexual performances are limited to the facial expressions alone, in extreme close-up, of these three women (Mario included). These close-ups recall those in my film Love (1962), but this time, the film is in color and focused on individual gestures.
The viewer's visual experience may be blurred, the boundary between fiction and reality becoming fuzzy. A laughing voice that runs through the entire film may seem absurd, but at the same time, it reveals the nature of life, which brings together—or alienates, for some—everything that exists. (T.I.)