Takahiko Iimura went much further than any other film artist in exploring a kind of art-science. His concern with the experience of time, its measured passage and the analogy between time and space, has been the main recurring theme at the centre of his work.
24 FRAMES PER SECOND - 1975-78 / 2007, 16mm/dvd, b/w, 10:35 mins. with sound
Both in therms of its examination of time and space, of light and darkness, of visuals and sounds; and in terms of its demands and potential rewards for an audience, 24 Frames Per Second is a quintessential Iimura film.
The film alternates between one-second passages during which the viewer sees one of a series of fractions and with one-second segments of black and clear leaders. As the film ptogresses, the fractions grow from 1/24 to 24/24. 1/24, for example, is followed by one second of film in which one frame is clear and 23 are black, and then one is black, 23 clear.
TIMED 1, 2, 3 (From MODELS, Reel 1) - 1972 / 2007,16mm/dvd, b/w, 10:15 mins. with sound
A particularly effective interweaving of visuals and sounds. Visually, each section of the film is composed of 10-second spans of clear and dark leader, arranged in a progressive fashion so that at first there is more light and less darkness, and vice versa.
During "Timed 1" a sound "bip" scratched directly onto the soundrtrack is audible each second. In "Timed 2" the sounds are audible every 10 seconds; and in "Timed 3" we hear them every 100 seconds, or at the halfway point and at the end. All in all, the number of interesting filmic explorations in the eight sections of Models makes it one of Iimura's most impressive films.
ONE FRAME DURATION - 1977 / 2007, 16mm/dvd, b/w & color, 11mins. with sound.
The film concerns the "duration" (or non-duration) of one frame, as the title indicates, the minimum unit of film in space (dark and light) with sound (or silent) and their various combinations.
"Time is, as it has been said by John Cage on music, the most important issue in film."
- Takahiko iimura