Atman

A visual tour-de-force and landmark Japanese avant-garde film in which Matsumoto creates, in kaleidoscopic colors and fierce sound, a pulsing revolution through 480 still pictures of a rotating figure who wears a demonic Noh mask. Although the seated figure faces the water throughout, a shifting wind would have the figure appearing to spin in opposite direction to the circling camera, causing an acute sensation of the decoupling of the film image from the earths gravitational pull, despite the continuous affirmation of the horizon line in the landscape in which the figure sits. The sound accompanying this is provided by composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. (Tampere Film Festival)