MA / 間, A Japanese Concept

Since the 1960s, Takahiko iimura’s explorations of the moving image have probed the relationship between media, time and language and have strived to redefine the exhibition of cinema as a mode of performance. He has worked closely with the giants of experimental film such as members of the Hi-Red Centre and Fluxus, Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, John Cage, Stan Brakhage and Stan Vanderbeek. His uncompromising work, here presented on DVD, bridges boundaries between film and performance art. "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 the 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

"Ma appears to apply itself to an infinity of cases, figures, occurrences, it comes from an elementary structural strategy that defines the ideogram's double emblem well enough, a sun in the embrasure of a door." - Daniel Charles (John Cage interviewer and author)

"Original, personal..to integrate a philosophical agenda with a visual one." - Nadine Covert ed. Art On Screen

Awarded Architecture' prize of UNESCO International Festival of Film on Art, 1991