Kenji Onishi
8mm experimental film directed by Minoru Shinojima. Shot and edited by Kenji Onishi. For 40 years, Minoru Shinojima has been opposed to mining Mt. Buko and is striving to protect the natural environment and cultural ground that inhabit the local area. Idomu’s will / last request. Spiritual journey with Mt.Buko folklore, Gods (Kami-sama) and photography. An important message that the director saw after surviving a near-death experience and depression. ...Why don’t the flowers grow in the right places? Where have all the cute children gone?...
8mm FILM Documentary 1979-2021 final version. Directing and script by Minoru Shinojima. Filmed and edited by Kenji Onishi.
8mm experimental film directed by Minoru Shinojima. Shot and edited by Kenji Onishi. For 40 years, Minoru Shinojima has been opposed to mining Mt. Buko and is striving to protect the natural environment and cultural ground that inhabit the local area. Idomu’s Testament - Sequel or IDOMU II. In Saitama prefecture Chichibu city there’s a mountain which was most loved by Tokugawa Ieyasu (founder of Tokugawa shogunate). It is Mount Buko, which rose 2 hundred million years ago when the pacific plate moved the underwater volcanoes around Hawaii. It is like the giant turtle shell where Myouken bodhisattva stood. A gentle mountain which heals people’s hearts and gives them the blessings of green and water.
Shooting began with pointing the camera at the sunset seen through the window at home, and continued until all the 8mm film I had was used up. The sound is recorded on a magnetic material coated on the film at the same time as shooting, and the sound on the cassette tape is mixed and played back at the time of screening. Sometimes a projectionist calls on the audience. This is a ritual that transforms the original shape and brings the dismantled "movie" back to the theater. (Kenji Murakami)
I returned to 8mm home movies for this compilation film, shot during the final year of my grandmother's life, and, beginning with footage of her garden. It is a documentary about gradually vanishing equipment collapsing and deteriorating, and also a document of those processes themselves. With the camera picking up details so minute that you can practically smell the pungent odors on the other side of the lens. I continued filming while actually having no idea when the device might reach the end of its life.
Dynamite Traverse Variations Tour with members of Chichibu Avantists (Shin Sasakubo × Daisuke Aoki × Haruka Shimizu). In the remains of Koumi stone quarry, original musical scores have been carved into the stone blocks like graphics. Video by Kenji Onishi, directed by Shin Sasakubo.
武甲風葬 2016 - "Boku Fuso" aka Funeral in the Wind, 8mm. Filmed at Mount Bukō (武甲山, Bukō-san) in Chichibu, Saitama, Japan. The summit of Mt. Buko was blown up in 1980. Three years before I was born. Shin Sasakubo grew up listening to blasts of dynamite scar the slopes of Mount Buko and echo across his small town every day at half past noon. Ritual. The pyramid-shaped mountain is considered a sacred symbol in the Saitama Prefecture known as Chichibu.
With the core members Shin Sasakubo and Daisuke Aoki, as well as a revolving set of members depending on the contents of the work, the CHICHIBU AVANT-GARDE art collective engages in expressive activities such as music, film, art, photography, writing, and theater. Filmed in 8 mm film there is a distinctive color and texture, and a seemingly nostalgic impression from the land pattern of Chichibu that is the stage, but it has an unknown sense of apprehension. A variety of emotions and scenes come to light, such as a sense of frustration, relief or fear, some kind of madness, or warmth.
With the core members Shin Sasakubo and Daisuke Aoki, as well as a revolving set of members depending on the contents of the work, the CHICHIBU AVANT-GARDE art collective engages in expressive activities such as music, film, art, photography, writing, and theater. Filmed in 8 mm film there is a distinctive color and texture, and a seemingly nostalgic impression from the land pattern of Chichibu that is the stage, but it has an unknown sense of apprehension. A variety of emotions and scenes come to light, such as a sense of frustration, relief or fear, some kind of madness, or warmth.
Kenji Onishi short film time-lapse projection at YIDFF 2013 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival).
Short film by Kenji Onishi. Tanzan Shrine, also known as the Danzan Shrine.
This is a film about a medium approaching extinction, an 8mm documentary film about a vanishing 8mm cinema. Blending two genres, the science film and the personal film, and benefiting from the participation of multiple generations of cineastes, it is a reflection upon the original cinematic experience.
Nakagawa shot “Coming Future” on the nights of December 24 and 25, 2010 in Shibuya, making it his location for an idealized Bohemia in the heart of Tokyo. Interesting interviews/discussions with Kenji Murakami, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Kenji Onishi, Tetsuaki Matsue and more... By far the most interesting sequence is with Kenji Onishi (“A Burning Star”). Wielding a super-8 camera, Onishi documents his own interview, taking random shots of street-life and buildings. He leavens his monologue with statements bordering between cliché and outré. “A movie that aims to make a message is boring.”
A very rare, Super 8 film by Fujiwara Sho (pen name Fujiwara Dragon), that was screened only one time. Some scenes were later reused in one of Kenji Onishi versions of Edge Cutters and altered. There were many versions of Edge Cutters and Kenji Onishi altered them for different screenings.
An attempt to let one's identity emerge by piercing fragments of 8mm film shot over some 20 years. The filmmaker's muttering and breathing reverberate over a series of visual images that invoke the primitive pleasure of an image coming into focus. This is a tribute to the culture of 8mm film, which is nearing its end, and a personal film directed with an approach that sets it apart from other films.
In this work, the developed video material which is trying to face physically to the filmmaker or film expression is bleached and fermented by his own gastric fluid, urine, blood and semen.
Kenji Murakami seeks out legendary wildman director Kenji Onishi and arranges a meeting with director Yoko Oguchi. The meeting turns unexpectedly intense...
Electronic Pinokio (2005) is playful again with its material (video) and the optical illusions you can produce and also provoke with it. But mainly it looks like a grainy shot from someone to close to a TV screen. Yellow, green, blue. pink, white, green. It will later turn into a pinkish and red female face and an ass will come and disappear again. The sound is dark and slowly pondering until red characters tell us it is “The End”.
A colourful feature about young criminals (Ominato Masao, Tachibana Kaoru, Tatesawa Sadoru), sex scenes and their bitter ends. Onishi again is using almost no dialogue, that does not make it easy to watch this film, but it makes so much sense. While killing and suffering or seldom enjoying nice and peaceful moments, what should they talk about?
White and grey, a big screen with noises and voices: we hear a man suffering. The film follows the hardscrabble day-to-day exploits of a nameless hero as he is trying to survive amidst violent, desperate men and desolate landscapes. Later we will watch them all again building a metal construction out in the desert. So these men here will find an Asian guy, almost dead: “You have got a point!” The Promised Land? No, and it is someone else who will die in the end. Or will simply end up in hallucinations.
Kenji Onishi films Takahiko Takayanagi, journalist of Yomiuri-paper, his daily live at the local TV.
Zetcho (1997) is a feature shot on video, including the typical colouring of washed-out white and blue. Again Onishi brings together couple’s problems, nature and brutalism, set against a colour-changing skyline or in small apartments. The structure of architecture and the one of nature. A cat hiding behind a car. While it all turns out to a drama of killing and brutalism against women. Travelling or hiding is never easy on that little island… (www.desistfilm.com)
The Air-Conditioning System (1997) introduces us to a young man in his flat, and the ways of communication with his girlfriend. The sky is blue and skirts are put on the balcony for drying. The wind will carry everything away, just like the noise and music or the porn we watch with him later on TV (he prefers to look at western blonde women). What will happen when the young woman in her flat will have found out soon that he is looking at her (and listening to her) via the air-conditioning system?
Blue Max (1997) shows a woman looking out of a window, but also working with extreme close-ups: The street, her neck, the window, her knees, the floor and her toes, brought together by the sound of a passing train. Her ears, her mouth, the wall and the door. The sparkling glass of a window and the young woman on top of a naked young man and later the shadows on the wall of both of them. A telephone is ringing and the clouds in the blue sky are travelling by while it all turns into a rape. And the calmness of both of them is quite irritating when they later watch TV together. (www.desistfilm.com)
The Underground Water (1996) comes as an ode to water in its forms and to that connected sounds, ice, drinking, mirroring, bathing, washing, pearling on a window, raindrops, reflecting architecture and grey trees. Dry leaves, wooden floors and a young man smoking a cigarette. Windows and doors are preparing the framing. Wind is coming up. Will it rain today? A young woman is pressing her face to a TV screen, all in blue but it is not water refreshing her. In her eyes you see some hidden memories and dirty tennis ball lying on the street are sucking up the drops of the rain. (www.desistfilm.com)
It is all flickering neon-light with Aquarium City (1996), a feature film of 76 minutes, using black inserts and the structure of the tatami again. Blue and grey are the most prominent colours, and a sky turning white while a young woman is using drugs and waving her hair. The needle in her arm, and we are watching from a distance while cars and motorcycles are passing the street. The possible contrasts in beauty seem to be Onishi’s theme, so after the dark street we watch another woman masturbating while sitting on a chair. But later placing the needle in the vagina of another woman. The sun is shining outside and cars continue driving. But the power is gone. And the way out is never anything else but a black hole. (www.desistfilm.com)
Out of Frame (1998) plays with your expectations and the way how we are used to “read” pictures and their framing. A woman is rubbing herself against a white wall, making the typical noises of having sex from the back, and Onishi takes his time to open the framing and then showing them in explicit positions. You don’t see the penetration but watch the rhythm of two bodies, listening to it, too. The framing by windows will allow you some rest. The man is putting on his clothes and closing the door while the woman is looking out oft he window. Onishi’s typical black inserts again, and we watch the same couple on the toilet, where he is putting her hands into hand-cuffs. After that he is showering her carefully, and she remains in hand-cuffs while they are having sex again under the shower. He is using his revolver then to free her from these metal things. And the toilet is a calm place when she comes back after strangling a young man on the street. (www.desistfilm.com)
"The clouds are rushing by, and the architecture of men fit so well in that movement. The bricks. The light is harsh and blue. But in the night it is different, you walk down the street and the sun turns into a light bulb again, the houses are asleep. It feels like thunder and the houses seemed to be dipped into blue and turquoise colours. And then it all turns blue again."
A Burning Star depicts the physicality of destruction and disappearance through images of the Japanese filmmaker's father who dies and is cremated. Maintaining a solid rhythm and perspective, this film highlights the meaning and importance of "viewing" and "filming" in documentary.
Kaoru Tachibana’s 8mm and 16mm filming course film workshop, 1996. Old Komaba campus Tokyo University student dormitory 3F. Shot & edited by Kenji Onishi and others.
Depiction of the physicality of destruction and disappearance through images of the Japanese filmmaker's father who dies and is cremated.
Squareworld has a stark, minimal narrative: a drug-addicted man kidnaps a young woman from the hills, holds her prisoner and eventually kills her and disposes of her body. We learn almost nothing about either the victim or her tormentor, and the film contains no moral judgments –Tony Rayns
Depiction of the physicality of destruction and disappearance through images of the Japanese filmmaker’s father who dies and is cremated.
Single-8 film by Kenji Onishi. Memories, death, funeral. Recorded in summer 1992-1994.
Super 8mm film by Kenji Onishi. Record of a girl playing with "shironeko" (white cat) on a sunny day. "Kuroneko" appears (black cat).
The village, the street, the house you spent your childhood in and where memories always mean flowers, nature and movement in a dark surrounding while the sun is shining outside. You can smell the sea, hear the waves and your shoes will always be dirty from the long way you walked. The father tries to breathe, close to death and pieces of pain are captured in that little camera. But what better can happen to a human being than dying surrounded by your family? The tender hands on your knee and the fresh water. The preparations are taken for the funeral. And outside the light goes on shining, the waves continue their way and it is dark during the night. And the next morning there will be white clouds in the sky again. (www.desistfilm.com)
Film materials of Single-8, synchronous recording of three girls, 1990's (18min.)
Short film by Kenji Onishi. The underground cinematheque. Last time Fujica and 311 Fukushima. The case against perfection - Fujica Single-8.
