24 Frames per Second

Iimura, who is Japan’s most important experimental film-maker, was involved in the New America Cinema developments in the early sixties. His work has continued to open up new ground in a way which few of his contemporaries from that period have managed to sustain. For the last year or so, he has concentrated on problems of Time and Duration. By using simple systems of counting and measuring in film, he has drawn attention to the complexities of our time perception – memory, rhythm, phase – and the interaction between conscious conception of time and the physical perception of its passing. Iimura is a significant and singular film-maker, but also one of the most important ‘conceptual’ artists working in any medium.- M. LeGrice, Time Out, 1975.