Matsumoto Toshio, Tsuburekakatta Migimeno Tameni (For My Crushed Right Eye, 1968), Still
I have just read Julian Ross’s invaluable article on expanded cinema and projection space in 1960s/early 1970s Japan. Particularly interesting is his account of the changing relationship between viewer and projection space, which was eventually marked by the waning success of Expo film programmes, towards an ‘Anti-Expo’ sentiment regarding festival screenings. The ‘space’, he argues, is never neutral, never static, and expanded cinema challenges conventional spectatorial perspective founded on a simple linear bridge between spectator and screen. Gone too, is the prescriptive concept of space as hierarchic ally ordered – the screen is freed.
‘space is never in a state of stasis and, instead, in a perpetual state of becoming, which is most prominently displayed in the event of an expanded cinema projection’ – Ross, 2013.
Have a read: