Its Hyper Japan this weekend in East London, at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Starting from tomorrow, there’ll be 3 days of celebrating Japan’s presence in London, with a variety of exhibitors with stalls providing food, fashion, books, anime etc. Our old friends from Third Window Films will be there too. Am looking forward to it.

Moriro Miyamoto's intriguing sounding Butt Boat hits London's East End

There’s something else on Saturday I wanted to draw your attention to however, which is totally unconnected with both this event and our own ZipanguFest, yet is happening around the same area.This is a screening of an indie film called Butt Boat (Shirifune) at the Cafe Oto, 18 – 22 Ashwin street, Dalston, from 7.30pm followed by a live set from Sobameshi & Porno  and a DJ set from Bo Ningen.

The event has been organised by Improvica, a new initiative aimed at bringing Japanese music and film to the UK by Yuhi Nakano, or in their own words “Improvica record label is London’s unrivaled portal for Japanese folk, electronic and conceptual music.  Under the guidance of Yuhi Nakano, Improvica serves indie to major labels from Europe and Japan, as well as organising events, concerts and art exhibitions.”

Clearly the East End of London is the place to fix your sites if you’re interested in Japan, because barely 3 days later you’ve got the Takahiko Iimura screenings coming to Bethnal Green, as I just posted last time, and there’s Zipangu Fest coming up at the end of November – watch this space for more info.

Visions of the Osakan underground music scene in Butt Boat

As for Butt Boat, it looks like its going to be a good fun night and I’ll be there in my element. I was passed on the information by the producer of Go Shibata, the director of such dirt-under-the-fingernail hits as NN-891102, Late Bloomer and Doman Seman, one of the many figures who have added their seal of approval to the film. All I know is there’s a lot of Osaka’s thriving music scene in the film, and a lot of bare arses too. Read on for the official blurb, and if that’s not enough for you, check out the official website here…

SHIRIFUNE ‘BUTT BOAT’ (film screening)
SOBAMESHI & PORNO (live)
BO NINGEN (dj set)
+ Authentic Osaka Okonomiyaki on sale!

With his previous film “Rainmaker”, director Moriro Miyamoto became the focus of much attention due to his aesthetic sensitivity said to be that of a filmmaker 20 years his senior.
In stark contrast to “Rainmaker”, which was shot in Berlin, Glasgow, Vietnam, the Tottori sand dunes and Osaka, new production “Butt Boat” was filmed entirely within the city of Osaka.
His inspiration: ‘butt paintings’.
Taking this obscure underground phenomenon as his topic, Miyamoto put onto film a noisy syntax of scenes saturated with the indigenous beat of Osaka.
Featuring not only members of the Osaka music scene, but also distinguished collaborators from various fields both in front of and behind the camera, “Butt Boat” boisterously shines with the young talent of the Kansai region.
In particular, members of the band OSHIRI PENPENZ were a cornerstone of the production, contributing music and sound recording as well as appearing in the film.
Positive responses to “Butt Boat” have come from several leading filmmakers, artists and musicians including JOJO Hiroshige, Shinji Imaoka, Mitsuru Meike, Shinsuke Michishita, Go Shibata, Tetsuya Umeda, Taichi Oka , Tetsujin Yajirushi and Hitoshi Odajima.

“Butt Boat”
The right eye spells your fortune, the left eye filled with light,
Standing tall with a backbone of chaos, this is Palace Noir!!

2009 / Japan / 82mins / DV / Color

Posted at 13:30 on 30 September 2010 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• Butt Boat
• Cafe Oto
• Go Shibata
• Hyper Japan
• Improvica
• NN-891102
• Third Window Films
• Zipangu Fest

Comments Off  

1

You might remember back in April I posted about an evening of films by the experimental filmmaker Takahiko Iimura organised by Close Up Video at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in London, which ultimately was canceled when the volcanic eruption in Iceland saw its guest of honour stranded in Japan. Well, the screenings are back on again for this October, and the extra time has actually allowed the event to be expanded into something of a touring programme, with the director in attendance at a number of screenings across the country, in London, Leeds and Bristol.

If you’re not familiar with Iimura’s work, you can check out his website, and await the interview with the director which should be coming up on Midnight Eye sometime soon conducted by Julian Ross. Julian also had a hand in getting the screenings up to Leeds, in conjunction with the Cherry Kino exerimental filmmaking/screening group and the University of Leeds’s Centre For World Cinemas-Mixed Cinema Network, where I gave a talk on the Japanese New Wave back in February of this year. Not only that, but Julian is also the driving force behind the Breaking Boundaries: Alternative Approaches to Japanese Film conference I mentioned in my post a couple of months ago.

I mention all of this because not only is Zipangu Fest, the new Japanese film festival that I am programming, collaborating with Breaking Boundaries where we’ll be screening a print of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Children of the Beehive, but Julian has also put together a programme of 1960s experimental work in collaboration with Close Up Video which will be screening at the Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club as part of Zipangu Fest on 23rd November. I’ll of course be announcing more details about this as they come, but suffice it to say for now, if you’re based in England and interested in 1960s experimental film from Japan, you’re going to be very well served this year!

Anyway, more details about the Iimura screenings below – note that the programme is different from venue to venue:

From Iimura's 'Talking Picture (The Structure of Film Viewing)', now available on DVD from the directors website

Dates in the UK:

October 5th: London, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club: Seeing/Hearing/Speaking – The Films of Takahiko Iimura + Live Performance

October 6th: London, Nowhere Lab (Workshop): no.w.here and Takahiko Iimura present: How To Make Time Visible In Film (without photography)

October 7th: London, Central St. Martins, University of Arts London

October 11th: Leeds, ICS Cinema in the University of Leeds more details on this particular screening below

October 13th: Bristol, Arnolfini: Takahiko Iimura: On Time in Film (Discussion and Screenings)

Observer-Observed: Takahiko Iimura

Here’s some more information for the Leeds event:

Cherry Kino and the CWC-MCN University of Leeds presents: Japanese Experimental Cinema: An Evening with Takahiko Iimura

Date: October 11^th 2010

Time: 6:30-9pm

Venue: ICS Cinema, University of Leeds

Price: FREE

Takahiko Iimura is an experimental filmmaker, video artist and writer on experimental film who has been working with the moving image since the 1960s. His work explores the relationship between media, time and language and has strived to redefine the exhibition of cinema as a mode of performance. He has worked closely with members of the Hi-Red Centre and Fluxus, as well as Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, John Cage, Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek and many others, bridging boundaries between film, art and performance. He moved to New York in 1966 and has since been a conduit of intercultural communication between Japan and America, introducing Japanese experimental cinema to the West and vice versa. He recently began self-releasing his work on DVD and continues to travel around the world to show his films.

“Although Taka was and continues to be an active part of the New York avant-garde scene, he always remained an enigmatic, mysterious presence, pursuing his own unique route through the very center of the avant-garde cinema. While the intensity and the fire of the American avant-garde film movement inspired him and attracted him, his Japanese origins contributed decisively to his uncompromising explorations of cinema’s minimalist and conceptualist possibilities. He has explored this direction of cinema in greater depth than anyone else.” – Jonas Mekas

“From early sixties, though Japanese, Iimura was well known as one of the first generation of the New York Underground … For many years, Japanese experimental film was Takahiko Iimura” – Malcolm Le Grice

Cherry Kino and the CWC-MCN University of Leeds have invited Takahiko Iimura to join our screening of a selection of his films, which will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker himself. Many thanks to WREAC who have helped us fund the event and the ICS for kindly offering their venue.

For more information on the event, please click here.

White Calligraphy

Films programmed for the event (16mm):

Ai (Love) (1962)

Iro (Colour) (1962-3)

Kuzu (Junk) (1962)

One Frame Duration (1977)

Cine-Dance: Anma (1963)

Ma: Space/Time in the Garden of Ryoan-ji (1989)

Performance of White Calligraphy (2008)

Posted at 12:16 on 20 September 2010 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• Arnolfini
• Cherry Kino
• Children of the Beehive
• Close Up Video
• experimental film
• Hiroshi Shimizu
• JulianRoss
• Mixed Cinema Network
• Takahiko Iimura
• Zipangu Fest

1  

3

I’m out of London for a couple of weeks, down in the rural idyll of Devon, so while there’s going to be a brief hiatus in film-related activity on this website, its that time of year again and the conditions are perfect for another of my passions – mushrooms! Here’s something I wrote a while ago that I thought I’d now make available to a wider audience. Enjoy….

Egghead Mottlegill (Panaeolus semiovatus)

Summer may well be coming to an end, but as the nights draw in, the temperatures drop, the long rains set in and the leaves start to fall, the woodlands take on a new lease of life. As any of the legions of fungi fanatics will tell you, a forage around the forests in Autumn can be as exhilarating as a safari across the Serengeti. You don’t have to eat what you find, and in most cases you would be exceedingly ill-advised to do so. Just take your camera and a spotters guide, and watch a whole new world open up before your very eyes. Shelley Evans and Geoffrey Kibby’s Pocket Nature: Fungi is the best of the pocket guides on the market, but the more zealous mycologist will certainly want to keep a copy of Roger Phillips’ encyclopedic though rather less-portable Mushrooms of Great Britain and Europe on their shelves back at home.

Jews Ear / Jelly Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae)

What we think of as mushrooms, or toadstools if we’re talking about the non-edible variety, are in fact only the fruiting bodies of a much larger organism. Like icebergs, the bulk remains hidden from view, as an underground cobweb of colourless, near-invisible, hairlike filaments called hyphae that feed on organic material such as leaf litter or weave beneath the bark of fallen trees, turning dead plant matter into soil. Each fungus possesses a dense, intertwining network of these hyphae, called the mycelium. The largest organism on this planet is an individual Honey Fungus (Armillaria mellea) in America whose mycelial mat covers a staggering 2,200 acres of land, though its fruits are only 6 – 15cm high.

Glistening Inkcap / Mica Inkcap (Coprinus micaceus):

Mushrooms and toadstools, which can appear and disappear within a matter of days, sometimes hours, have enchanted people since ancient times. Just think of the iconic Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria), whose lurid red cap flecked with white dots has been long associated with folklore, fairy tales and witchery. Back in the 1970s the Biblical scholar John Allegro caused a scandal with his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Holy Cross when he suggested that the New Testament was a cover story to disguise Christianity’s roots in the ancient cults who used the mushroom in religious rituals; in short, that Christ was in fact a mushroom (long out of print, but check here for the ongoing debate). Now what would Dan Brown make of that? You’d be exceedingly foolish to contemplate the Fly Agaric as a path to spiritual enlightenment, however. As Allegro himself acknowledged, its consumption leads to vomiting, diarrhoea, muscular convulsions, hot flushes and in many cases, death.

Parasol Mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) - edible, this one!

Only a handful of toadstools will kill you, but its worth remembering that most don’t necessarily signal their toxicity as flagrantly as the red-for-danger cap of the Fly Agaric. The aptly-named species of Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa), Poison Pie (Hebeloma crustuliniforme) and Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) all look pretty nondescript, but they’ll finish you off in a matter of hours, and beware, just because a mushroom is not toxic to slugs, it doesn’t mean it won’t be toxic to humans!

Dryad's Saddle / Pheasant's Back Mushroom (Polyporus squamosus)

The vast majority of the 4000 species found across the British Isles are not fatal, but this doesn’t mean they’re edible either. Many are too small, too hard or too vile-tasting. Cardboard or tree bark would be preferable to chewing on Cramp Balls (Daldinia concentrica), Dead Mans Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha), Dung Roundheads (Stropharia semiglobata) or Dog Stinkhorns (Mutinus caninus). Also, different people react differently to different species, and the long-terms effects of consuming most are still unknown. Some, like the Common Inkcap (Coprinus atramentarius), react incredibly badly with alcohol, even several days after it has entered the bloodstream.

Of course, as anyone who has tasted fresh Chanterelles (Cantharellus cibarius) or Ceps (Boletus edulis) fried in butter and garlic will testify, some are absolutely delicious. But the golden rule is to assume the worst. If you’re not an expert and you can’t be 100% sure you have identified your bounty correctly, you’re better off just looking, not touching. Those interested in finding out which are good to eat are advised to join one of the many fungi foraging groups that have sprung up across the country over recent years.

Yellow Stagshorn (Calocera viscosa)

Many people are just content with taking photographs, or the challenge of identifying the ephemeral fruits of these fascinating organisms. Many are quite beautiful to behold, and come in a plethora of colours, shapes, and sizes, as these pictures of the Yellow Staghorn (Calocera viscosa) and Magpie Inkcap (Coprinus picaceus) demonstrate. Some are just plain bizarre, like the Collared Earthstar (Geastrum triplex) or Jelly Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae), the latter used extensively in Asian cuisine.

Stump Puffball (Lycoperdum pyriforme)

Its amazing that even to this day, so little is known about these intriguing organisms that are closer to the animal kingdom than the plant kingdom, but recent research is showing that the fungi kingdom possesses all manner of important qualities that can enhance not only one’s personal well-being, but benefit the environment too. To find out more about mushrooms have been used for anything from clearing up oil pollution to a clean and effective way of ridding houses of insect infestations, I recommend Paul Stamets’ inspiring book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.

Can't identify the mushrooms, but its a beautiful photo all the same...

Posted at 15:03 on 05 September 2010 Filed under news.

• Tagged
• John Allegro
• mushrooms
• mycology
• Paul Stamets
• The Sacred Mushroom and the Holy Cross

Comments Off  

6