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Nobuhiro Kawanaka

Directing

Biography

Born in Tokyo in 1941. Began making 8mm films in the early 1960s, and in 1968 took part in the formation of Japan’s first filmmaking association based on individuals. Oversaw the foundation of the organization that would later become Image Forum in 1970. Began to hold regular screenings of experimental films. Has produced a total of 100 short and feature-length works to date, throughout which he has consistently investigated the meaning of making films as an individual.

Filmography Movies

Acting

MOVIE

A Man Who Became Cinema

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Masato Hara made his directorial debut in high school in 1968 and achieved a reputation as a young prodigy. Many years later, he continues to make films and show his old experimental 'live-screening' films, but is saddled with massive debts. This film follows eight years in his life.

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A Man Who Became Cinema

MOVIE

Where is Tomorrow, Shuji Terayama

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The documentary to find the "true Shuji Terayama".

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Where is Tomorrow, Shuji Terayama

Himself

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KIKAIDE MIRUKOTO = Eye Machine / To See by Chance –The Pioneers of Japanese Video Arts–

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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 expression.

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KIKAIDE MIRUKOTO = Eye Machine / To See by Chance –The Pioneers of Japanese Video Arts–

MOVIE

Discovery of Image – The Era of Toshio Matsumoto

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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. Directed by filmmaker and critic Takefumi Tsutsui—himself both a filmmaker and critic like Matsumoto—the project was filmed over the course of ten years. Interweaving excerpts from Matsumoto’s works with an extensive series of interviews with collaborators and critics, the documentary retraces, through the figure of Matsumoto, the tumultuous decades from the 1950s to the 2000s across five parts, totaling 700 minutes.

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Discovery of Image – The Era of Toshio Matsumoto

Production

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Director

タウンスケープ・10「ROOM」MOVIE

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Photographs of a nude, arranged into stop-motion sequences on the left half of the screen, are juxtaposed with a close-up of the film itself passing in front of a viewer, gradually revealed on the right half of the screen.

Kick the World

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Writes Kawanaka, "Video is a medium of image as well as sound. Walking on a gravel road with a camera, the crunch sound is captured in real time. Such [an] observation seems obvious, but as a filmmaker, the ability to record sound in real time was very new to me. Referencing a can-kicking game I played as a child, I followed the rolling can and recorded the resonant sounds of the can hitting the ground."

Shishōsetsu

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A compilation of Kawanaka's representative "Shishōsetsu" series. "The title of my film series, 'I-novel,' is easily misunderstood. The 'I-novel' is a traditional Japanese literary form in which the filmmaker depicts his or her life as if poking around in a box. That's why I didn't shoot it like a regular documentary film. I'm filming everyday life, but it's fictionalized into a scene I've never seen before." -Nobuhiro Kawanaka

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A nostalgic work, which attempts to reconstruct the materials of postwar 35 mm newsreel footage given by the filmmakers’ friend and old tinted picture postcards. He frankly describes in his own coherent style of filmmaking how he was moved when he saw these films and photographs for the first time. An attempt to rediscover fresh and new images in the past products.

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Director

Transparent ProcessMOVIE

MOVIE

Transparent Process

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The seminal image of the continuous motion of a woman skipping. While Edward Muybridge worked to accurately record human movements, this film, shot in 16mm and made 100 years later, sparks interest in how it disrupts the order of continuous movement.

Spinning Time

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This formal study is based on a series of postcards of pre-war Tokyo. The artist fuses these images of the past with the same scenes that appear today in an evocative and lyrical way.

“B” Continued

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“I am deeply involved in human memory and the feeling of nostalgia brought about by time. For this piece, my challenge was to observe time within the frame.” (Nobuhiro Kawanaka)