Documentary videographer. Nagano directed a TV documentary of Yoko Ono. Nagano has joined the Japanese avant-garde art movement. (Courtesy of NPO Dance Archive Network)
Mr O’s Book of the Dead is the last of a trilogy of experimental films about Kazuo Ohno, co-founder of the contemporary Japanese style of dance known as butoh, made with director Chiaki Nagano during a period in which he had retired from public performance, and just before he began touring the world as a solo dancer with his celebrated work Admiring La Argentina. In the film, Ohno leads a troupe of strangely dressed, made-up and gesticulating dancers through a succession of landscapes alternately lush, desolate and surreal.
Mandala of Mr O is the second of a trilogy of experimental films about Kazuo Ohno, co-founder of the contemporary Japanese style of dance known as butoh, made with director Chiaki Nagano during a period in which he had retired from public performance, and just before he began touring the world as a solo dancer with his celebrated work Admiring La Argentina.
A Portrait of Mr O is the first of a trilogy of experimental films about Kazuo Ohno, co-founder of the contemporary Japanese style of dance known as butoh, made with director Chiaki Nagano during a period in which he had retired from public performance, and just before he began touring the world as a solo dancer with his celebrated work Admiring La Argentina.
A group of youths try to create works they think suitable for filling up the "hollowness" of life. For example, by hiring an orchestra and having its members count the stars in the sky from dusk to dawn, they create a new kind of music. Ms. Yoko Ono, the leader of the group, who calls herself a one-time musician, poet, and painter, explains the motives of their eccentric conduct.
