Merzboy has gone conceptual and I’ve been following along. The latest post surrounds a stack of films by Toshio Matsumoto entitled, Experimental Film Works (1961-1987). The collection charts Matsumoto’s decades-long course of exploration in film, presented in downloadable AVI format. I haven’t dug through them all yet (time, how much and what to do with it…), but the few that i have seen are absolutely flooring.

For the Damaged Right Eye is a dual-lobed, split-screen montage charting the unrest, sexuality and pop-culture of the late 1960’s. Sexual topography, typography and riot police coupled with grooving heads and the intermittent overlay of grid-breaking sequences of film and imagery constitute the bulk of my favorite so far. Both FtDRE and Ectasis paved the way for, and were eventually incorporated into Matsumoto’s 1969 film, Funeral Parade of Roses.

True to the collection’s title, all of Matsumoto’s films trace a diverse trajectory through years of work and wide-ranging experimentation. The Weavers of Nishijin classically captures the process of Nishijin textile manufacture in rich black and white reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai era. The minimalist Atman explores the concept of the one-true-self in masked deity-form, set in a field of psychedelic (dis)coloration. A continuation of Matsumoto’s recurrent conjuring of Buddhist/Hindu deities in pulsing, interstitial fields of color and script that leaves me longing for subtitles.

Thanks no doubt to his roots in painting, Matsumoto’s films are the type that demand to be experienced rather than passively observed. Lucky for us, Merz has pointed the way toward a drove of them to dive through, via UBUWEB.

The Weavers of Nishijin (1961) (avi, 317mb)
For the Damaged Right Eye (1968) (avi, 154mb)
Ecstasis (1969) (avi, 123mb)
Atman (1975) (avi, 329mb)
Everything Visible Is Empty (1975) (avi, 167mb)
White hole (1979) (avi, 126mb)

via: Merzboy Goes Conceptual / The Grey Lodge / UBUWEB

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