Spazio Maiocchi to host a retrospective on Toshio Matsumoto's movies

After debuting in June with Clemens von Wedemeyer's Transformation Scenario digital exhibition, the online platform Afterimage, the project of Spazio Maiocchi curated by KALEIDOSCOPE and dedicated to exploring the best of the world's audiovisual art, presents a new retrospective on cinema and the work of Toshio Matsumoto. It will be a monographic focus on the work of the Japanese experimental director that will include nine of his films shot between 1969 and 1987 between avant-garde documentaries, visionary short films and films in which the Japanese tradition collides with modern pop culture. 

The broader cultural movement in which Tatsumoto fit was the Japanese New Wave, which rejected the conventions of the cinema of the past and wanted instead to translate on-screen the conflicts and inconsistencies of the turbulent daily reality of Japan in the 1960s – a period that, in terms of social tensions, was not too different from the present. The result was a mixture of controversial themes, arthouse and metacinematographic techniques, mixing documentary and fiction as well as a revolutionary approach to editing and photography. All elements that are used in the selection offered by Afterimage, accompanied by a short essay by Alexander Shulan, which presents the best short films by Matsumoto - the part of his work in which the soul of the director and that of the video artist meet. 

For the next twenty-three days, it will be possible to stream on the dedicated page of Afterimage shorts such as Extasis, Metastasis, Atman or Mona Lisa that will immerse the visitor in a unique and provocative visual experience in its desire to break from the homologation and overabundance of the visual stimuli of today's world.