Takashi Ito

Takashi Ito is one of Japan's best-known experimental filmmakers, and his Spacy is an established classic which elaborates the concept of the "infinite regress" through a zoom in to a stand on which animated photos show a zoom in to the same stand, ad infinitum, with reverses and variations. (KG)

In these films, Ito experiments with stop motion in order to tear the fabric of time and space. Ito films photographs within photographs creating a feeling of the infinite and often feelings of cognitive dissonance. (KG)

Ito films photographs within photographs creating a feeling of the infinite and often feelings of cognitive dissonance. (KG)

Starting from photographs of an unused factory, this animation creates movement with the objects of which they are occupied by changing their prospective from one photograph to the other. Put into an abyss, photograph within photographs, variations starting from two basic series whose different treatments produce visual paradoxes. (KG)

Ito experiments with stop motion in order to tear the fabric of time and space. (KG)

A short horror movie made by Japanese experimentalist Takashi Ito; one of haunting light and haunted space(s), otherworldly movement and abstracted time. (theseventhart.org)

In the early afternoon, a mother holding her child stands still in the park of a housing project. The kind of sight that is a symbol of beauty and love. Be as that may be, they have no face. The camera is aimed persistently at the spot from which they have vanished as if to find something. A work that began out of the search to understand the relation between the family and the self. (mubi.com)

Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his ioys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank. (imageforum.co.jp)

"A long time ago, I would often dream of the uncanny and mystical landscape that appears in moonlight. Irrational landscapes and spaces filled with unspeakable pleasures like a black object that revolves slowly while flying over the scattered clouds that float in the night sky, their lumps illuminated by the light of the moon." (imageforum.co.jp)

"A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, a disabled man is still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images." (imageforum.co.jp)

Created for Yasumasa Morimura's April 6~June 9, 1996 exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art. Filmed with Morimura in the guise of Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch" as model. An imaged version of what is evoked by the words "Morimura", "Marilyn," "actress", "disguise", "display", "sex" and "death". (imageforum.co.jp)

Ito is one of the leading experimental filmmakers in Japan. He graduated from Art and Technology Department of Kyushu Institute of Design in 1983 during which he made a debut with the film SPACY in 1981 (Inagaki who created sound effects for the film was also a filmmaker and his classmate at the institute). He was rather a premature virtuoso. (Letterboxd)

In this short film, the screen stares back at the viewer with an eye of its own.

A film in which the one 60-story skyscraper that soars in the spaces between roofs spins with incredible speed. I centered the circumference with its 400 or 500 meter radius on the skyscraper and divided it into 48 sections, then took photographs from those spots and shot the photographs frame by frame.

"I turned my gaze to the various events in daily life and made this filmic diary in a manner as if confessing my feelings. Of course, since I was making the film, I wanted to depict these feelings and events with tricky techniques. I used various methods to shoot photographs of a relative's wedding, the landscape I see from window of my house, commemorative travel photographs and the like frame-by-frame." – Takashi Ito

Without warning, the image of a girl wildly waving a baseball bat that slices through the air leaps to my mind. Such speed also reminds me of the rhythm of the filmmaker's previous works. Or is it a symbol of teenage madness? A ceremony to summon some creature from a legend?

"The majority of my 8-mm works were made for the three-minute "Personal Focus" film special put on in Fukuoka. This film is an animation of photographs I had taken on a regular basis as a sort of diary, and was made to have a rough feel to it." - Takashi Ito

The filmic version of a city in which all surface beauty has rotted away. In order to find images of death like landscapes of the city from which people have vanished, and buildings from which the decorations have been stripped away and the inner organs exposed. (mubi.com)

Two girls witnessed her attempted suicide, and in this film I am attempting to depict the broken state of their psyches. (mubi.com)

About a woman who is haunted by death, on the final day of her life. (mubi.com)

Fragmentary stories of two students with a video camera and an old butoh dancer who finds himself followed by a woman are interwoven.