Ground Level Cinema グラウンド・レベル・シネマ
From Hsin-Yu Chen, Parallax 「視差」, 9 min, digital, color
This February, as part of our Community of Images series and our Meander program, we are thrilled to present a feature on the screening collective Ground Level Cinema (グラウンドレベルシネマ). Defining itself as “a film collective that transcends nationality and borders," the group is comprised of members from both Japan and Taiwan and has hosted screenings in both countries since 2020, often simultaneously. Conceived as a means of collaboration through the conditions imposed by coronavirus, the group have experimented with a variety of screening formats and venues. The three films in the program are by Johan Chang & Masa Kudo, Hsin-Yu Chen and Kenta Yamaguchi.
Ground Level Cinema was formed by the 44th generation of Image Forum's Visual Research Institute (class of 2020) who still comprise its core members. From their first screening (GLC vol. 1.0) in November 2020, they have operated according to the ethos that all works screened must be newly made, and screenings must happen in both Japan and Taiwan. Despite operating long-distance, the group has maintained a loose but lasting sense of solidarity. Having formed during the coronavirus pandemic, it was precisely when various social and communal events were being cancelled due to encouragement of self-isolation that Ground Level Cinema chose to place their emphasis on “screening”, exploring the importance of creative expression in real-life spaces. With their open and DIY ethos, the group aims to inspire latent filmmakers to have the confidence to take the first steps to make new works and show their films publicly.
Although formed at Tokyo’s Image Forum Visual Research Institute, the group’s international orientation began through Taiwanese member & fellow Image Forum graduate Johan Chang, as the members speculated on ways to continue collaborating despite being physically separated by coronavirus travel restrictions. They came up with the idea of holding a screening in both Tokyo and Taipei simultaneously, followed by a remote Q&A video discussion between the two locations. Chang, involved with Taiwanese collective ReaRflex, recruited Taiwanese artists to participate, resulting in Ground Level Cinema: Vol. 1.0, a 3-hour screening held simultaneously at Image Forum in Tokyo and Virtual Art Hub in Taipei. Since then, GLC's members have steadily grown, and the collective have experimented with different formats and venues, such as the 2023 "Trample the Border" event, a 9-day-long looping program of films at Feb Gallery Tokyo where visitors could drop in and out to watch works from over 25 artists.
The first work in CCJ’s program, Jouhatsu Letters 「蒸発書簡」 was made for Ground Level Cinema Vol. 4, held in October/November 2023. It is a collaboration between founding members Masa Kudo, an animator, and Johan Chang, who works in 8mm, in the form of an exchange of film-letters between Tokyo and Taipei in the summer of 2021. Images of traces and their evaporation evoke what is lost in the transmission of messages across time and space. The second work, Parallax 「視差」, is an exploration of vision and perspective by Taiwanese artist Hsin-Yu Chen, who became involved with Ground Level Cinema through the collective ReaRflex. Chen spent five years studying and working in Philadelphia, and the work includes images shot in the artist-run Automat Gallery and from the archive of the State Library of Pennsylvania, presenting an uncanny collage of spaces and objects viewed through a range of optical instruments and distancing frames. The final work, Red Ball Missing!! 「赤い玉がない！！」is by Kenta Yamaguchi, a core member and manager of Ground Level Cinema, and was shown at the 2020 Image Forum Festival. It is an absurd self-portrait of a filmmaker who travels through the mundane textures of everyday life in pursuit of a mysterious red ball.
Our Community of Images programming is generously supported by Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Toshiba International Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts’ Preserving Diverse Cultures grant.
PROGRAM
Masa Kudo and Johan Chang, Jouhatsu Letters 「蒸発書簡」, 13 min, digital & 8mm, color
Hsin-Yu Chen, Parallax 「視差」, 9 min, digital, color
Kenta Yamaguchi, Red Ball Missing!! 「赤い玉がない！！」, 18 min, digital, color
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THE PROGRAM WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING ON CCJ’S VIEWING PLATFORM.
This Members Viewing program is supported, in part, by a grant from the Toshiba International Foundation.
program
Masa Kudo and Johan Chang, Jouhatsu Letters 「蒸発書簡」, 13 min, digital & 8mm, color
In the summer of 2021, Johan Chang, who lives in Taipei, and Masa Kudo, who lives in Tokyo, began a video correspondence with the rule that reply by quoting sounds or pictures from the images sent by the other. It was during the period of COVID-19 that two filmmakers couldn’t meet in person. Letters, which have been used as a means of communication since ancient times, with the effect of condensing, deepening, and materializing emotions. The letters sent to each other, evoking the senders’ daily life. The work shown in this screening is part of a two-year video correspondence that has been compiled into a circular work with no beginning and no end. Each letter is a complete small world.
Hsin-Yu Chen, Parallax 「視差」, 9 min, digital, color
Measurement of optical distance collides with psychological proximity. The experience of an eye test retreats to insect visual motion experiment observers. We walk through a camera obscura to a Lacanian anecdote. Interior and exterior space blurs. It’s a process of anchoring yourself from the outside.
Kenta Yamaguchi, Red Ball Missing!! 「赤い玉がない！！」, 18 min, digital, color
A tale in 7 chapters of the filmmaker’s search for an elusive red ball, stolen by his friend Masuda.
"I" returns home, takes a shower, and emerges totally naked, irritated by the composure of his good-for-nothing friend "Masuda" and venting his anger. "Mom", on the other hand, is totally fine. One moment she's sleeping like a log and snoring loudly, the next she's doing a funny dance in the altar room. In comparison, what is "I" so angry about? A movie boy's delusion, engulfing his beloved mother and his partner-in-cinema, transforms into a "red ball" that explodes inside his mind.
Masa Kudo
Masa Kudo is an animation filmmaker born in Chitose, Hokkaido in 1993. Their filmography includes “Difference and Repetition and Coffee” (drawing animation / 5min / 2020), “Tokyo cyanoghosts” (animation by cyanotype (blueprint) / 3min / 2021) and “Still Life” (animation with acrylic paint / 3min / 2021). Their work has been screened at Image Forum Festival East Asian Experimental Competition, New Chitose Airport International Animation Film Festival, GLAS Animation Festival international competition, Zagreb International Animation Film Festival, Moscow International Experimental Film Festival and more. They have been awarded the Hokkaido Governor Award at the New Chitose Airport International Animation Film Festival, the Yoji Kuri Award and the ASK? Film Competition, and an Honorable Mention at the New Cosmos of Photography 2022 (selected by Yuki Onodera), among others.
Johan Chang
Johan Chang (b. 1990, Tainan, Taiwan) has been working in documentary film festivals/organizations and producing documentaries for many years. She started to make her personal projects in 2019 at Image Forum’s courses in Tokyo, Japan. Her work explores the expression of moving images to address memory, image-making, hand-made process, and diary films. She is also a member of ReaRflex (Taiwan) and Ground Rebel/Level Cinema (Japan). Johan is currently based in Taipei, Taiwan.
Hsin-Yu Chen
Hsin-Yu Chen is a filmmaker and artist currently based in Taipei, Taiwan. He works with experimental film, documentary, and moving image to explore the liminal space between seeing and being seen where subjectivity is implicated and constructed. Drawing on border landscapes, embodied knowledge and vision techniques, he examines the intersection of the viewing body and the political subject. His work has been shown at Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-gah Museum, TW; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, FR; Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, FR; Kassel Dokfest, DE; 25 FPS, HR; and Arkipel - Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, ID. He has participated in the Oberhausen Seminar and residencies including RAIR Philadelphia and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Kenta Yamaguchi
Kenta Yamaguchi is a 29-year-old filmmaker. He was born at Kanto Teishin Hospital in February 1994, and due to various reasons dropped out of university in July 2016. After dropping out of school, he got into movies and worked part-time at a movie theater. It was there he found a flyer for the Image Forum Visual Research Institute. He made up his mind and knocked on the door, and has been a filmmaker ever since. Yamaguchi manages the film screening collective Ground Level Cinema and the exhibition space Feb gallery Tokyo.
community of images: Japanese moving image artists in the uS, 1960s - 1970s
Community of Images: Japanese Moving Image Artists in the US, 1960s-1970s will be an exhibition of experimental moving images created by Japanese artists in the U.S. during the 1960s and 70s, an area that has fallen in the fissure between American and Japanese archival priorities. Following JASGP's Re:imagining Recovery Project and its mission to support and engage diverse audiences through Japanese arts and culture in collaboration with local organizations, this project aims to discover, preserve, and present film and video works and performance footage by Japanese filmmakers and artists to the wider public.
We have partnered with the University of the Arts, and will present this exhibition at the Philadelphia Arts Alliance in June - August 2024.
The project and its online programming is generously supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage & the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Toshiba International Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts’ Preserving Diverse Cultures grant.