Chris Cunningham on RES magazine

The special screening of the works of Chris Cunningham was a retrospective of his best videos selected by himself, and interviews of him talking about each work. Having shown at big exhibitions like Venice Biennale and Istanbul Biennale, Cunningham is now attracting attention from any creative fields. The day of screening was full of people eager to see this special screening. In the speech, Jonathan Wells, the festival director made a sweet gift for Chris Cunningham by shooting a message from audiences “Hello Chris, love from Tokyo!”, and would be sent to London. I hope he will be able to come next Resfest.

Photo: Mike Sheetal

A talk session was held on 23rd, with Johnny Hardstaff and Logan, Naohiro Ukawa and Jiro Ohashi from SAL Magazine. The talk jumped many range of topics, from the inspiration of film making to the technology and sex.

Hardstaff said working with Radiohead was not exactly a collaboration, rather an investment of trust, and there was no particular difference between making music clip limited by track, and his own project. Ukawa added that the essence of creation was to pursue the image by working on details. In the session, someone said, “less budget, better work” and everyone on the stage nodded. The basics mind of top creators must have encouraged young creators.

Breath Control “History Of The Human Beatbox”, Dir: Joey Garfield　© 2002 Filet ‘0’ Fresh Productions

For 4 days, I spent over 8 hours to watch as much as programs I could. I think I enjoyed a lot although the chair was so painful. But I still missed many works which was my regret. I found many interesting pieces in music videos, but unexpectedly, I was fascinated with documentaries. A single, long featured film, “Breath Control”, directed by Joey Garfield struck me most. It was a challenging documentary about the history of the human beatbox, musicians whose only instrument is the human voice. The footage included incredible percussion beats they produced by voice, rare concerts films and interviews of its pioneers in the 80’s and musicians at present.

Documentary needs a classical but essential creative action – to hold your camera, go out and record – and it tells us a lot about the way of artists how to look at the world. On the contrary, nicely designed, but no contextal works were a bit disappointed. Technological experimentation is an obsession of creators, but we can appreciate it most when the clever approach with its compactness and sharpness as short films can be found.

Some works could be seen on the internet, but watching short films on a big screen was fun. However, I thought they could have more variety of the way of screening. For example, Doug Aitken’s “Windows” was much nicer when I saw this work in Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery last month in an installation. But those never reduced my appreciation to this festival, providing a rare chance to see the today’s digital films from amateurs and professionals, from any kind of creative fields at one time. Those chance is simply, very important.

Johnny Hardstaff used the word “healthy” in talking about his impression of Resfest. Respecting each creative spirit, Resfest will keep an unique stance in the digital creation and I am looking forward to seeing this enjoyable festival again next year.

RESFEST 2002
Date: November 21st – 24th, 2002
Place: Laforet Museum Harajuku, Tokyo
Address: 3F Harajuku R Bld. 6-17-10 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Tel: +81 (0)3 3406 8835
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