Film Independents 1964: A Commercial for Myself

titles:Genpei Akasegawa : HOMOLOGY / Hiroshi Sakurabayashi : JIKEN (An Incident) / Yasunao Tone : 2,880K=120″ / Yoshiyuki Oka: SOUGON (An Important Statement) / Takahiko iimura : URA TO OMOTE (Inside & Outside) / Sho Kazakura : MUDAI (Untitled) / Ryu Koike : TORUMARUKIYO NO KYO-EN (Banquet of Torumarukiyo) / Toshiaki Suzuki : NAGARERU (Flow) / Takahiko iimura : MY DOCUMENTARY / Hideko Nagaoka : SEI-UCHU (Sexual Space) / Ryu Koike : RINNE (Samsara) / Sakio Hirata : KATORAN -4GYOSHI- NO KENKYU (A Study of Katoran – 4 Lines Poem) / Nobuhiko Ohbayashi : COMPLEXE -trailer- / Katsuhiro Tomita : Untitled / Donald Richie: JINSEI(Life)/ Mary Evans : GOMI (Garbage)Film Independents ~ A Commercial for Myself ~Julian Ross (University of Leeds)To coincide with the celebration of fifty years since the Oberhausen Manifesto was announced by 26 filmmakers and film professionals, Nick James of Sight and Sound outlined the history of manifestoes in the past century of cinema (May 2012). Predictably ignoring Asia altogether, he overlooked a vital contribution from Japan: the Film Independents’ Manifesto published in September 1964.His article, however, at least manages to address one recurring and fatal fate of the film manifestoes – their short lives. The Film Independents were no exception; after their first event at the Kinokuniya Hall, Shinjuku, on 16-17 December 1964, and some subsequent screenings in Kyoto and elsewhere, the Film Independents folded before a year had passed. Nevertheless, looking back at their activities provides valuable insight into what possibilities were perceived for cinema by Japanese artists of the early 1960s.The first event gathered artists from different genres to make 2-minute shorts for a programme they titled ‘A Commercial for Myself.’ Rather than big-budget features, the word ‘commercial’ indicates TV advertisement in Japanese, a mass media format the series of films both parody and perplex. Indeed, two films directly pilfers the ads: Nobuhiko Obayashi presents a trailer of his short film Complexe and performance-artist Ry Koike imitates the information delivery in quick succession found in advertising with his frenetic montage of discarded film stock. Besides pointing to the protruding presence of television, the paradox embodied in the title – the juxtaposition of the personal and the masses – signals a joyful desire to reclaim the medium to the artist and rethink film as a tool for individual expression. The films, assembled for this DVD release, are a visual testimony of the results of their wishes.Even more so than the film manifestoes of the early avant-garde in Europe, the Film Independents stimulated non-filmmaking artists to try holding a camera. Arriving from all corners of the arts, the experiments were at once radical but simultaneously pointed towards what was at least once palpably apparent – the specific qualities that came with the medium of cinema.Film is a time-based medium: the stopwatch, at once motionless and mobile, filmed by musician Yasunao Tone of Group Ongaku; film critic Donald Richie’s slapstick delight that spans a man’s lifetime in 2-minutes; and Ry Koike’s 360-degree pan that restlessly attempts to capture everything only to find stasis.Film is at once material and illusional: the pinholes that punctuate the black leader film strip to illuminate sparkles onscreen by Yoshiyuki Oka and the dancing shapes animated in colour by performer Sh Kazakura and Toshiaki Suzuki.Film is a medium that can capture movement: the stasis of objects are highlighted with flash-frenetic editing of a sculpture by performer Genpei Akasegawa; Katsuhiro Tomita’s camera stalks a lifeless mannequin with persistent curiosity; whilst Takahiko Iimura and Hideko Nagaoka both filmed photos, newspaper-clippings and magazine cut-outs in attempts to shake them into motion.Within the given two-minute remit, the artists explored, in their own individual ways, the potential inherent in the medium of film as outlined above. The most joyous outcome of the Film Independents in its short life is the range the works spanned and the diversity of artists the project drew together. The manifesto proved not only a voice of resistance but also a call form arms, with unprecedented response as the artists went to prove with subsequent projects into the 1960s.