While perhaps most well-known for his debut feature I’VE HEARD THE AMMONITE MURMUR (which screened at Spectacle last December), Isao Yamada has, since 1977, created over one hundred experimental short film-poetries in a collection he calls Yamavicascope. These films emphasize the “non-digital optical sensation” produced by the 8mm (and occasionally 16mm) film upon which they are shot, and hand-edited, by Yamada. This emphasis on materiality is seen throughout Yamada’s other artistic output, which includes paintings, manga, graphic design, and a calligraphic font known as “Yamada-moji,” which he uses for the titles and type in his films.

This March, Spectacle is honored to present a two-night Yamavicascope retrospective; these four programs, titled by Yamada himself, invite a career-spanning glimpse into the director’s “private films.”

“フィルムの死が先か、「私」の死が先か、という状況にある。”
(“The situation is whether the death of 8mm film comes first, or the death of ’I’ comes first.”)
– Yamada (2017)

Full lineup here: https://www.spectacletheater.com/yamavicascope/#iy3