Zone (film)

Zone is a 1995 Japanese experimental short film directed by Takashi Ito. It features a headless figure restrained to a chair, surrounded by a ghostly, masked figure, a model train, and other imagery.[1]

Zone
Directed byTakashi Ito
Release date
  • 1995 (1995)
Running time
13 minutes
CountryJapan

In 1996, Zone won a Main Prize at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, Germany.[2][3]

Themes and interpretations

Ito described Zone thus:[2]

A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, a disabled man is still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images.

Chihiro Minato, curator of the 2000 arts exhibition Serendipity: Photography, Video, Experimental Film and Multimedia Installation from Asia, wrote that Zone displays "the subject as an insubstantial surface" that is "suffused within ... [and] ... turns into a rapidly changing game of speed and afterimages."[4] Chihiro likened the film to a séance, a parallel he argues is reflected in its setting: "a bleak, artificial environment surrounded by steel-reinforced concrete walls."[4]

In 2015, following its screening at the 61st International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, Yaron Dahan of Mubi described Zone as a culmination of the experimentation Ito exhibited in his previous films Thunder (1982), Ghost (1984), and Grim (1985).[1] In Zone, Dahan writes, a "headless plaster-man is bound to a chair surrounded by recognizable images from his previous work. A ghost inhabits this imagined space: a Noh-masked, light-draped child-demon haunting the artist's passage into the life stage of fatherhood, necessitating a re-evaluation if not reinvention of the self."[1]

Home media

In 2009, Zone was released on DVD along with 19 other films by Ito as part of the Takashi Ito Film Anthology.[5] The DVD includes behind-the-scenes images of construction plans used in the production of Zone.[6]

References
  1. Dahan, Yaron (4 June 2015). "Ghosts of Time and Light: The Experimental Cinema of Ito Takashi". MUBI. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
  2. "伊藤高志《フィルモグラフィー》" [Takashi Ito Filmography]. ImageForum.co.jp (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
  3. Boyce, Laurence (14 March 2015). "Oberhausen Announces New Programme Focusing on Ito Takashi". Cineuropa. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
  4. Magnan-Park, Aaron Han Joon; Marchetti, Gina; Tan, See Kam, eds. (2018). The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 142–143. ISBN 978-1349958214.
  5. "Takashi Ito Film Anthology (DVD)". British Film Institute (BFI). Retrieved 17 January 2023.
  6. "Takashi Ito's Film Works". Midnight Eye. 10 August 2010. Retrieved 17 January 2023.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.