Daïchi Saïto

History

Daïchi Saïto (Canada / Japan) studied literature and philosophy in the USA and Hindi and Sanskrit in India, releasing his first book Moving the Sleeping Images of Things Towards the Light with Les éditions Le Laps (2013). Saïto is now based in Montréal where he is a co-founder of Double Negative, an artist’s collective dedicated to the exhibition and production of experimental film. His work explores the relation between the corporeal phenomena of vision and the material nature of the medium, fusing a formal investigation of frame and juxtaposition with sensual and poetic expressions. Saïto’s films have been exhibited at festivals, museums, galleries and cinematheques worldwide

Movies

YOSHIDANOBUO
Screenplay
Due to the SOMA secret society, Tokyo is under a chaotic order of destruction. People who have a high amount of MTE in them are kidnapped and brainwashed by the SOMA.
earthearthearth
Producer
The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on ‘our’ earth.
earthearthearth
Editor
The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on ‘our’ earth.
earthearthearth
Director
The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on ‘our’ earth.
Engram of Returning
Director
Accompanied by an extraordinary improvisational score by Montreal-based musician Jason Sharp, Daïchi Saïto’s Engram of Returning is an epic 35mm CinemaScope metaphysical travelogue that reveals a supernal world which pulses and flickers with formal patterns and deep hues.
Miron : Un homme revenu d'en dehors du monde
Special Effects
Light Licks: Pardes: Drowned Hat Rescue Media City Motown Jump
Never a Foot Too Far, Even
Director
Appropriating a brief fragment from a 35mm print of an old Kung Fu movie, Never a Foot Too Far, Even is an action movie without action. Presented in double-projection, with images from two separate rolls overlaid to form a single image, this film focuses on an obscure figure finding himself in a forest path, caught between perpetual motion and stasis. The painterly images fluctuate in the complex shifting of color and texture, phasing in and out through a polymetric structure. It is a perceptual journey without destination in the turning sphere of ever-changing image and sound, whose beginning and end move in parallel towards a fleeting point of convergence. The palindrome of the title alludes to the structure of the film based on various combinations of a series of recurring sequences that move forward and in reverse simultaneously, defying the usual sense of progression. With original sound composition by Malcolm Goldstein.
Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis
Director
Flickering lights and trees.
Green Fuse
Director
A vegetal portrait in which the shape of trees becomes pure color, light and shadow, an organic form in a permanent dialogue with abstraction.

All That Rises
Director
Juxtaposition of seeing and sounding, sky and stone and all that's in between. A short walk in an alleyway, to hear vision sounding images, blessed with light and darkness.
Blind Alley Augury
Director
A direct record with on-screen edition in which beings, objects, light, shadow, and color are portrayed in a program, as if they were part of an ecosystem.

Chasmic Dance
Director
A visual metaphor for creative process as a sustained state of flux, whereby the deconstruction and reconfiguration of source material manifest themselves as a series of rapid abstract movements. Alluding to the cosmic dance of Shiva, the film is an expression of primal rhythmic energy, moving dialectically but without sublimation. Regeneration ignites destruction, and transformation invites mutation, through clashes of opposing modes such as video/film, surface/depth, and light/darkness.
Chiasmus
Director
An exploration into perceptual processes in the act of seeing and listening, Chiasmus takes film as a metaphor for the breathing body, through the intercrossing of the medium and the fragmented images of the body in movement. The rhythm and tension created by the interplay between sound and image, and their disjunction and conjunction, aspire to an organic and sensual moment where inside becomes outside, and outside inside.