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6. Experimental Films

On a 1970 visit to New York, Tanaami was profoundly inspired by underground independent films, frequently screened at the time, by such filmmakers as Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. This experience led him to begin producing experimental films in addition to animations. In 1975 he intensively produced six films, including Artificial Paradise (cat. 6-7) and Why (cat. 6-2), two works that highlighted his interest in printing techniques. The same year, Tanaami and the filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto (1932–2017) held a joint exhibition featuring their films, titled Beyond Films. Tanaami’s films were also screened at Theater Tenjo Sajiki Kan in Shibuya, run by Shuji Terayama, as well as at overseas film festivals in Germany, New York, and Ottawa, solidifying his career as a filmmaker. His Youshi Kei (Infantile Landscape) (Prologue) (1978) (cat. 6-5) was autobiographical, addressing his childhood wartime experiences, memories, and dreams and endeavoring to give visual form to primal, formative phenomena. For Tanaami, film has always been a means of preserving his ever-evolving memories.

Throughout the 1990s, as Tanaami produced numerous drawings, he increasingly aspired to animate them. He reconnected with the animator Nobuhiro Aihara (1944–2011) at Kyoto University of Art and Design, leading to a period in the 2000s when the two men collaborated on animations. They kept up a correspondence of images, mailing drawings back and forth which Aihara eventually edited into videos. Numerous works came out of this experimental approach, and in all Tanaami has produced over 70 films to date. Film remains an indispensable medium for Tanaami, enabling him to explore new creative territory while traversing various media.