
Directing
A central figure on the Tokyo experimental film scene and already a veteran of the international festival circuit, Kenji Onishi has made nearly 200 films since 1990, ranging from Super-8 studies of light to full-length features filled with drugs and violence. His filmmaking output spans many genres, and he has become known for a distinctive personal style that melds structural concerns with overtly sensationalist subject matter.

A behind the scenes documentary of Kenji Onishi's never completed 35mm feature film "Shiroyasha", shot between 2002 and 2004.

A very rare, Super 8 film by Fujiwara Sho (pen name Fujiwara Dragon), that was screened only one time. Some scenes were later reused in one of Kenji Onishi versions of Edge Cutters and altered. There were many versions of Edge Cutters and Kenji Onishi altered them for different screenings.

Out of Frame (1996) plays with your expectations and the way how we are used to “read” pictures and their framing. A woman is rubbing herself against a white wall, making the typical noises of having sex from the back, and Onishi takes his time to open the framing and then showing them in explicit positions. You don’t see the penetration but watch the rhythm of two bodies, listening to it, too. The framing by windows will allow you some rest. The man is putting on his clothes and closing the door while the woman is looking out oft he window. Onishi’s typical black inserts again, and we watch the same couple on the toilet, where he is putting her hands into hand-cuffs. After that he is showering her carefully, and she remains in hand-cuffs while they are having sex again under the shower. He is using his revolver then to free her from these metal things. And the toilet is a calm place when she comes back after strangling a young man on the street.

Zetcho is a feature shot on film, including the typical colouring of washed-out white and blue. Again Onishi brings together the couple’s problems, nature and brutalism, set against a colour-changing skyline or in small apartments. The structure of architecture and the one of nature. A cat hiding behind a car. While it all turns out to be a drama of killing and brutalism against women.

Nakagawa shot “Coming Future” on the nights of December 24 and 25, 2010 in Shibuya, making it his location for an idealized Bohemia in the heart of Tokyo. Interesting interviews/discussions with Kenji Murakami, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Kenji Onishi, Tetsuaki Matsue and more... By far the most interesting sequence is with Kenji Onishi (“A Burning Star”). Wielding a super-8 camera, Onishi documents his own interview, taking random shots of street-life and buildings. He leavens his monologue with statements bordering between cliché and outré. “A movie that aims to make a message is boring.”

Kenji Murakami seeks out legendary wildman director Kenji Onishi and arranges a meeting with director Yoko Oguchi. The meeting turns unexpectedly intense...

It is all flickering neon-light with Aquarium City (1996), a feature film of 76 minutes, using black inserts and the structure of the tatami again. Blue and grey are the most prominent colours, and a sky turning white while a young woman is using drugs and waving her hair. The needle in her arm, and we are watching from a distance while cars and motorcycles are passing the street. The possible contrasts in beauty seem to be Onishi’s theme, so after the dark street we watch another woman masturbating while sitting on a chair. But later placing the needle in the vagina of another woman. The sun is shining outside and cars continue driving. But the power is gone. And the way out is never anything else but a black hole.

The Underground Water (1996) comes as an ode to water in its forms and to that connected sounds, ice, drinking, mirroring, bathing, washing, pearling on a window, raindrops, reflecting architecture and grey trees. Dry leaves, wooden floors and a young man smoking a cigarette. Windows and doors are preparing the framing. The wind is coming up. Will it rain today? A young woman is pressing her face to a TV screen, all in blue but it is not water refreshing her. In her eyes, you see some hidden memories and dirty tennis balls lying on the street sucking up the drops of the rain.


The Underground Water (1996) comes as an ode to water in its forms and to that connected sounds, ice, drinking, mirroring, bathing, washing, pearling on a window, raindrops, reflecting architecture and grey trees. Dry leaves, wooden floors and a young man smoking a cigarette. Windows and doors are preparing the framing. The wind is coming up. Will it rain today? A young woman is pressing her face to a TV screen, all in blue but it is not water refreshing her. In her eyes, you see some hidden memories and dirty tennis balls lying on the street sucking up the drops of the rain.

Electronic Pinokio (2005) is playful again with its material (video) and the optical illusions you can produce and also provoke with it. But mainly it looks like a grainy shot from someone to close to a TV screen. Yellow, green, blue. pink, white, green. It will later turn into a pinkish and red female face and an ass will come and disappear again. The sound is dark and slowly pondering until red characters tell us it is “The End”.

A man fingering the girl before killing her. Camera cuts to blue sky and cat. A man choking his girl. Onishi at his usual with framing, extreme close-ups, expectations and black inserts.

Sound of rain. Storm. Fixed camera. Time-lapse of skies and clouds. A playful silhouette against the light.

武甲風葬 2016 - "Buko Fuso" aka Funeral in the Wind, 8mm. Filmed at Mount Bukō (武甲山, Bukō-san) in Chichibu, Saitama, Japan. The summit of Mt. Buko was blown up in 1980. Three years before I was born. Shin Sasakubo grew up listening to blasts of dynamite scar the slopes of Mount Buko and echo across his small town every day at half past noon. Ritual. The pyramid-shaped mountain is considered a sacred symbol in the Saitama Prefecture known as Chichibu.

武甲風葬 2016 - "Buko Fuso" aka Funeral in the Wind, 8mm. Filmed at Mount Bukō (武甲山, Bukō-san) in Chichibu, Saitama, Japan. The summit of Mt. Buko was blown up in 1980. Three years before I was born. Shin Sasakubo grew up listening to blasts of dynamite scar the slopes of Mount Buko and echo across his small town every day at half past noon. Ritual. The pyramid-shaped mountain is considered a sacred symbol in the Saitama Prefecture known as Chichibu.

A nostalgic summer festival. Revisiting some dark footage through the images of memory. As an afterimage, it appears like a ghost.

Kenji Onishi's 35mm feature film.

When give a digital camera to Peeping Tom...

Documentary about japanese painter Akira Tsuboi.



