Tomonari Nishikawa
История
Nishikawa’s films explore the idea of documenting situations/phenomena through a chosen medium and technique, often focusing on process itself. His films have been screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including Berlinale, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. In 2010, he presented a series of 8mm and 16mm films at MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and his film installation, Building 945, received the 2008 Grant Award from the Museum of Contemporary Cinema in Spain. He served as a juror for the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the 2012 Big Muddy Film Festival, and the 2013 dresdner schmalfilmtage. He is one of the co-founders of KLEX: Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival and Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image. He lives in Japan/USA, currently teaching in Cinema Department at Binghamton University.
Director
Rhythmic and hypnotic, Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke is the latest triumph from analogue maestro Tomonari Nishikawa, a deceptively complex interplay between fireworks footage shot during a Japanese summer festival and the sonic imprints left by the same images on the optical soundtrack.
Director
In this live projection performance for 16mm film, Tomonari Nishikawa explores the material specificity of the cinematic apparatus through a real-time manipulation of its physical elements. Scratching directly onto the emulsion of a looping filmstrip in the midst of projection, Nishikawa creates animated abstractions in a pattern of horizontal lines, and also generates the film’s score, a percussive throbbing of noise.
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Short film by Tomonari Nishikawa
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Shot on Yokohama’s famous Cosmo Clock 21 Ferris Wheel using a telephoto lens, Japanese experimentalist Tomonari Nishikawa's film becomes a disorientingly trippy and constantly regenerating play of structural supports as filmic apparatus.
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Shot using a masking technique and several exposures which collapse temporalities, Tomonari Nishikawa’s Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon is an intimate and clever 16mm portrait of bridges on the Yahagi River.
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Short film by Tomonari Nishikawa
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35mm negative film stock was buried under leaves near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The abstract flurry of activity on the surface of the filmstrip translates the energies of the radioactive site. Disordered marks and traces, representing the imprint of time between sunset and sunrise on the night of June 24th 2014, blend into the green and blue tones of the light-exposed emulsion.
Director
A study in visual rhythm with images of architecture in Manhattan, New York, using the technique I did for the first sequence in Sketch Film #3. All edited in-camera and hand-processed afterwards. This film was commissioned by Echo Park Film Center for the celebration of its 12th anniversary.
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A vibrantly kinetic portrait of New York's Times Square, shot through technicoloured filters, by Tomonari Nishikawa
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"JR (Japan Railway Company) Yamanote Line is one of the Japan's busiest lines, consisting of 29 stations and running as a loop. The film shows scenes around the entrances of 20 stations, from Shibuya Station to Tokyo Station clockwise. The in-camera visual effects and the layered soundtrack would exaggerate the noises and movements at the senses."
Director
Train platforms in Tokyo, as seen by avant-garde filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa.
Director
Lumphini 2552 (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2009, 3 min., 35mm, 1.37:1, sound, b&w, Thailand) It was shot through a still camera at Lumphini Park in Bangkok, Thailand. The hand-processed visual shows the organic patterns found in this monumental park, constructing the systematic yet emotional rhythm and pace on the screen, accompanied by the sound from the visual also captured through the still camera on the optical soundtrack. Lumphini is named for Lumbini, a Sanskrit word of the birthplace of the Buddha in Nepal, and 2552 is the year on the Buddhist calendar for 2009.
Director
This film was shot with a still camera with 16 lenses, which takes a series of 16 pictures within 1.5 seconds, fitting onto two normal frame areas. The film shows the sense of the event at Tokyo Racecourse, when it was holding the biggest race of the year, Japanese Derby (Tokyo Yushun). The excitement of each race lasts 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Director
Images are originally shot by two super 8 cameras, capturing the side views of me riding a bicycle, from Marin County to San Francisco. The dual projection shows new landscape of photogenic city. The ride ended after joining "Critical Mass," an event occurs every last Friday of a month in San Francisco.
Director
Sketch Film #5 (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2007, 3 min., super 8, silent, 18/24fps, b&w, USA) This is the last film in the series. I shot at the site of Marin Headlands County in California when I was an artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Art. The footage shows the nature in the area, as well as the historic buildings originally built for the US Army, including batteries and the Nike Missile Site. It was all edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards.
Director
The fourth film in the series, for which I focused on colors and shapes. It was shot on Kodachrome, all edited in camera, and processed at Dwayne’s Photo.
Cinematography
Clear Blue Sky is the study of movements, colors, shapes and their relation to sound. Visual effects are created through, not a lens, but an adjustable slit, which was attached in front of the image sensor chip of a DV camcorder, while shooting at Washington Square, San Francisco.
Director
Clear Blue Sky is the study of movements, colors, shapes and their relation to sound. Visual effects are created through, not a lens, but an adjustable slit, which was attached in front of the image sensor chip of a DV camcorder, while shooting at Washington Square, San Francisco.
Director
Sketch Film #3 (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2006, 3 min., super 8, silent, 18/24fps, b&w, USA/Japan) The third film in the series, which starts with a sequence of paired images: a focused image and a blurred image of the same subject, which was caused by a diagonal camera movement. Later, it shows an experiment to produce an apparent depth by rotating an apparent shape. It was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards.
Director
All images were filmed on Market Street, one of the main streets in San Francisco. The visual was carefully composed frame by frame, while shooting on the street. This project was commissioned by Exploratorium and San Francisco Arts Commission for the outdoor screening event, A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005: An Outdoor Centennial Celebration.
Director
Sketch Film #2 (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2005, 3 min., super 8, silent, 18/24fps, b&w, USA) The second film in the series, showing my study especially in apparent shapes – a shape that cannot be seen in a single frame but only through a series of consecutive frames when projected. It was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards.
Director
Sketch Film #1 (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2005, 3 min., super 8, silent, 18/24fps, b&w, USA) As a painter carries a sketchbook and practices drawing, I carried a Super 8 camera and shot frame by frame, as an everyday exercise to make animations of lines and shapes found in the public space. The entire film was edited in camera and hand-processed afterwards.
Director
The sound will be produced from the visual on the optical soundtrack – for some parts, I used a 35mm still camera to expose the soundtrack area, and I scratched off the film emulsion directly for other parts. This is my senior thesis project at Binghamton University, and Julie Murray was my advisor.
