This screening will be followed by a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Takashi Ito

Spacy (1980-1981)
Runtime: 10 mins
Country: Japan
Language: no dialogue
Rating: exempted from classification

Synopsis

Regarded as a landmark work in experimental film history that propelled Takashi Ito to international recognition, Spacy unfolds within a gymnasium where photographs of the same space are displayed on stands positioned throughout the hall. Constructed through the meticulous composition of more than 700 still photographs, the film creates a hypnotic exploration of space and perspective.
*This film contains flashing images that may trigger seizures for viewers with photosensitive epilepsy.

遠い声 Distant Voices (2024)
Runtime: 53 mins
Country: Japan
Language: No dialogue
Rating: PG

Synopsis

Two women wander with cameras through deserted port warehouses, sunflower fields, and abandoned housing complexes. One photographs strange objects and herself, while the other repeatedly hangs a black dress in different locations to capture it on film. Reflections, mirrors, and fragmented doubles recur throughout, as the women drift through bleak landscapes seemingly detached from the world.

About Takashi Ito

Takashi Ito is one of Japan’s most significant experimental filmmakers and a key figure in the country’s avant-garde cinema. Influenced by his mentor, avant-garde pioneer Toshio Matsumoto, while studying at the Kyushu Institute of Design, Ito emerged in the late 1970s with a distinctive cinematic language that combined stop-motion photography, long exposure, and recursive spatial constructions. His breakthrough works Spacy (1981), Thunder (1982), Ghost (1984), and Zone (1995) are widely regarded as landmarks of experimental cinema, noted for their hypnotic explorations of space, memory, movement, and perception.

In 2021, Ito directed his first feature-length film, Toward Zero, which received the Shuji Terayama Award at the Image Forum Festival. Over the course of his career, his works have screened extensively at international film festivals, museums, and cinematheques, including retrospectives at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the British Museum, and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

This screening is part of the programme Reciprocal 2026. For more screenings of this programme. Please click here. 

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