This silent, 8mm film combines two camera procedures: time lapse and the zoom lens. It aims not for technical smoothness but a beguiling abruptness. Starting at the same time each evening, the camera records, in jerky leaps, the moment when the sky darkens and an urban streetlight turns on, illuminating the screen. Alternating zooms-in and zooms-out, Ranmaru Usui – part of a Japanese 1970s movement that explored ‘cinema of the soul’ – offers transcendence within the everyday.
– Adrian Martin
Also in this combined programme
-
Pepper Steak
Frame by frame, abstract, hand-painted images tussle with scraps of photographic representation. Which will win? -
Lost on Arrival
A heartrending portrait of a consciousness losing its connections to the past and the world. -
God Moves on the Water
Céline Dion sings praise of God’s implacable wrath in this mischievous media remix. -
Överföringsdiagram Nr 1
Destroyed books and reconstituted state documents produce new knowledge in this densely associative political essay. -
-
Lanesville UFO Incident
Cheerful locals play witnesses in this humorous faux report about UFO sightings in backwoods America. -
Surface Tension #2
A lyrical, impressionistic portrait of Manhattan in Kinemacolor, presented through strobing red and green filters. -
Dossier of Tentacular
A dense, shape-shifting scrapbook of ideas exploring the mechanisms of knowledge production. -
Black Rain
Satellite images of spectacular solar phenomena, with artefacts intact, evoke the mysteries of the universe. -
Being Strong Is Hard
A barrage of images of Kurdish women activists, journalists and fighters, scored to electronic music.
Film details
- Country of production
- Japan
- Year
- 1976
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2024
- Length
- 4'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
